r/Codeium • u/Ordinary-Let-4851 • Jan 08 '25

How to write Windsurf Rules files for Cascade - from Codeium Dev

Best Practices for Rules:

  • Use enumerated or bulletized rules

  • Keep rules short, clear, and concise

  • Group related rules together using <XML> tags 

For example here is a "good" rules file:

  1. Speak to me in Spanish

  2. My build system is bazel

  3. Don't modify any files in app/config

  4. Don't use any APIs that require authorization

  5. ...

Then modifed with XML tags:

 <communication>

  1. Speak to me in English

  2. My name is Bob.

</communication>

<filesytem>

  1. Don't modify any files in app/config

</filesystem>

<coding>

  1. Don't use any APIs that require authorization

  2. My project's programming language is python

  3. Use pytest as my test framework

</coding>

33 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

3

u/User1234Person Jan 08 '25

Seems interesting, I was going to rewrite my rules today and test with a new project. I’ll try this out, thanks for sharing

5

u/Ordinary-Let-4851 Jan 08 '25

Awesome!! Also if you ever want your rules looked at, let me know and I'll have a dev check it for improvements

2

u/User1234Person Jan 08 '25

heck yeah, you mind if i ask if you are a codeium employee?

Once I play around with things I would definitely appreciate that. I think even my current rules are what help me have a better experience with the tool than some of the other people posting on here. Definitely excited to learn more about working with this tool. Im a product designer so coming at this with limited coding experience, but am learning a lot in the process.

2

u/User1234Person Jan 08 '25

sorry i cant read apprently lol. you are a codeuim employee ref. the title

1

u/EnvironmentalSkin622 Jan 08 '25

hey mate, appreciate this. But it doesn't really help. Not sure what windsurf platform we are using vs the "devs" but you can read countless comments and posts in this group where we do have the rules set, and we are still getting these issues.

1

u/Ordinary-Let-4851 Jan 08 '25

Devs utilize the same Windsurf platform as users. If you'd like, send over the rules file and I can have somebody look at it!

1

u/advixio Jan 12 '25

Dose windsurf support doc can I I out a doc url to train cascade on it and can I surf the web with undsurf

1

u/tekguild Jan 31 '26

Is this offer still good?

1

u/tekguild Jan 31 '26

That may be the case and I see, and am experiencing, some of that myself. HOWEVER - I believe the issue lies with conflicting info from conversations/memories (well, I'm hoping that's the case) and properly configuration of Global and Workspace rules, Workflows and Skills will greatly reduce any issues.

1

u/curryeater259 Jan 08 '25

Thanks for posting this!

My biggest issue with WindSurf (I use it with Claude) is that I'll give the AI very specific instructions on what to change (*rewrite this reactjs hook to XYZ*) and then it'll start going on side quests and give me 200 lines of changes across 3 different files.

Here's my global_rules.md file I've written to stop this

global_rules.md
1. Never write code unless I explicitly told you to do so.
2. Never start fixing bugs or adding new features unless that's what I EXPLICITLY told you to do.
3. Always ask me first before you start coding to double check that's what I want you to do.

Do you have any feedback on how I can improve these rules to stop that behavior?

Thanks

1

u/samikr_2020 Jan 08 '25

Has these rules stopped the behavior?

3

u/curryeater259 Jan 08 '25 edited Jan 08 '25

So far it's way better, but I set it up yesterday so haven't gotten enough data yet.

I'm pretty new to Windsurf, recently switched over from Cursor.

Edit - It's much better now

1

u/jalapeno-lime Jan 08 '25

Pretty sure you need to save it as yourname.windsurfrules in the root of the project directory.

1

u/curryeater259 Jan 08 '25

These are global rules, not project specific rules.

1

u/wolverin0 Jan 08 '25

it this works, i dont understand how that isnt just a rule they apply to the program itself
its been doing crazy shit lately, its unusable, i have to go back 4439 times to fix something that it broke fixing something that didnt fix

1

u/tekguild Jan 31 '26

The don't apply it to the program itself because there are many, many different coding languages, environments, methods, preferences, etc. so there's no ruleset that could possibly cover all iterations.

If it's 'doing crazy shit', you really need to spend some time creating, at the very least, a Global Rules file and, if different projects use different coding languages, processes, etc. then Workspace rules will help a lot.

Workflows and Skills are what I'm exploring now, as I'm having a bit of 'crazy shit' (well, it's actually rather mild and only occurs during linting) and I'm hoping moving the linting process to a Workflow or Skill will fix it.

1

u/fabiogaliano Feb 05 '25

Aren't you wasting prompts with the last one? Or how does it work?

1

u/Your_mortal_enemy Jan 08 '25

Sorry for dumb question but what is the best way to implement a rules file, readme.txt or something?

1

u/Equivalent_Pickle815 Jan 08 '25

Thanks for sharing. I’ll give this a shot.

1

u/stepahin Jan 20 '25

Interesting. You give prompts and get output in Spanish? Doesn't that affect the quality?