If Cursor rules aren't working, you're not alone. You wrote .cursor/rules (or a legacy .cursorrules file) telling the agent to use named exports, Zod validation, and your error-handling pattern — and the agent still generates default exports and skips validation.

This usually means one of three things:

The rules file is in the wrong place or format

The rules are too vague for the model to prioritize

The conventions you wrote don't match what your team actually enforces in PR review