Every weekday a single, opinionated rule for senior C#/.NET engineers using Cursor. Here's the full week in one read — canonical posts live on the Agentic Architect blog.
7 daily senior rules
Rule 13: Strongly-Typed IDs
Sun 09 Aug
OrderId as record struct OrderId(Guid Value) beats raw Guid everywhere. Stops the AI passing a CustomerId where an OrderId was expected — a bug the compiler can't catch with primitive obsession but catches instantly with domain primitives.
Rule 12: IOptionsSnapshot Over Raw Config
Sat 08 Aug
Business code should never call IConfiguration directly. Strongly-typed IOptions or IOptionsSnapshot bindings only. The AI loves to "just grab the config value" — refuse it and force a settings class with validation attributes.
Rule 11: Rethrow, Don't throw ex
Fri 07 Aug
throw ex resets the stack trace. throw preserves it. Cursor gets this wrong about 40 percent of the time when generating catch blocks. Rewrite any naked throw ex to throw unless the exception has been explicitly wrapped.
Rule 10: AsNoTracking for Reads
Thu 06 Aug
Every read-only EF Core query should call AsNoTracking. Add a rule that recognises query methods returning DTOs (not entities) and inserts the call. Cursor never does this by default and your read perf degrades silently across releases.
Rule 9: Scoped Capture in Singleton
Wed 05 Aug
The single most expensive .NET runtime bug: a Singleton holding a Scoped service. Cursor cheerfully writes this without warning. Audit constructor parameters of any class registered as Singleton — if any are typically Scoped (DbContext, repositories, MediatR sender), flag it before merge.
Rule 8: CancellationToken Propagation
Tue 04 Aug
Every async method in your codebase should accept and forward a CancellationToken. Make it a rule that any new async signature without one is flagged. Stops the AI from quietly losing cancellation half-way down a call chain.
Rule 7: IHttpClientFactory Discipline
Mon 03 Aug
Refuse new HttpClient() in any generated code. Force Cursor to inject IHttpClientFactory or a typed client. The classic socket-exhaustion bug is exactly the kind of footgun an AI hands you without realising.
Try one rule before you trust the whole kit
The free arch-core-lite.mdc is one drop-in Cursor rule that ends the morning re-explanation ritual. Install in 60 seconds, see whether Cursor actually remembers your DI lifetimes, and decide for yourself whether the full kit is worth £9.00.
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Free sample:
arch-core-lite.mdcon GitHub - Full kit (£9.00, one-time): Agentic Architect Kit
- Daily rules feed: https://agentic-architect.dev/blog/
Canonical home for everything in this digest: https://agentic-architect.dev/blog/.
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