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Cursor integrates Well-Architected guidance through .cursor/rules/*.md files — a native Cursor mechanism for injecting persistent instructions into the AI assistant. Two rules files are provided: well-architected.md applies always-on WA principles to every conversation, while wa-review.md activates conditionally when you request an architecture review, running the full structured assessment process.

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What gets installed

FileActivationWhat it does
.cursor/rules/well-architected.mdAlways on (alwaysApply: true)Six pillars, design principles, trade-off guidance, and response format
.cursor/rules/wa-review.mdConditionalFull multi-step review process: scope, discovery, pillar evaluation, risk assessment, report

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Installation

1

Copy the rules directory into your project

cp -r path/to/this-repo/adapters/cursor/rules .cursor/rules
Or use the install script from a local clone:
./install.sh ~/my-project --tool cursor
2

Verify the file structure

After installation your project should contain:
.cursor/
  rules/
    well-architected.md    ← always-on WA principles
    wa-review.md           ← conditional review activation
3

Test the integration

Open Cursor in your project and ask a design question. The agent should respond with pillar-aware guidance, using severity labels and concrete next steps.
What Well-Architected pillars should I consider for this architecture?

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How the rules activate

well-architected.md

Always active. The rule carries alwaysApply: true in its frontmatter, so Cursor injects it into every conversation automatically. You get six-pillar awareness, design principle reminders, and trade-off acknowledgement without any extra prompting.

wa-review.md

Conditionally active. Cursor applies this rule when the conversation matches its description — architecture review, WA assessment, or architecture health check requests. It walks through scope definition, infrastructure discovery, per-pillar evaluation, and report generation.

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Usage

To trigger a full structured Well-Architected review, mention it in your message: 
Run a Well-Architected review of this codebase.

Do a WA review focused on security and reliability.

Architecture review — we're considering this design for a serverless workload.
Cursor’s conditional rule picks up phrases like “architecture review”, “WA review”, and “architecture health check”. For a quick assessment of a specific area, ask about a single pillar — for example, “how is our security posture?” — and well-architected.md alone will guide the response with the relevant best practices.
Every finding produced by wa-review.md is evidence-backed: the rule instructs the agent to cite specific file paths and line numbers. If code is unavailable, findings are marked “Cannot Determine” rather than generating generic recommendations.

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