Rules For AI - Guiding Prompt. A Beginner-Friendly System for Replit, Cursor, Gemini & Claude Builders

Before running the prompt, make sure you’ve read this👇.

How And Why This System Works

• Best practices: It preserves the best of the existing ‘rules for AI’ best practices, with a few additions tailored for beginner-friendly product thinking.

• Environment-aware: it generates the right file for your actual setup - replit.md, cursor.mdc, whatever you’re using.

• Teaching built in: every rule explains why it exists in simple language. You learn conventions in context, not from a textbook.

• Product thinking and ripple-effect awareness: it shows the downstream consequences beginners without product-thinking experience usually miss:

  • If you add a trial period ➜ your billing logic + onboarding flow change

  • If you add notifications ➜ you’ll need scheduling + retries + preferences

  • If you add user-generated content ➜ you’ll need moderation flows + abuse checks

  • It also forces a clean Build Now vs. Build Later split so you don’t ship products that look like my Substack drafts folder: 37 features started, none finished.

• For Agents And For Humans: You’ll notice the prompt is written in plain language, not JSON.
  That’s intentional - it outputs a critical project file so I want to keep it bilingual, readable by both humans and agents.

How To Use The Agent Rules Builder Prompt

• Use the prompt below in your ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini.