The goal is to consolidate rule and skill configurations into the .claude/ directory. This allows Claude Code and Cursor to share the same configuration files, eliminating the need to maintain separate copies in .cursor/rules/ and .cursor/skills/.

How Cursor Recognizes .claude/ Files

Skills: Native Support

Cursor can natively scan the .claude/skills/ directory. By enabling the "Include third-party Plugins, Skills, and other configs" option in Cursor's settings, the IDE automatically detects these files without any additional setup.

Rules: Sharing via Symbolic Links

Cursor is hard-coded to scan .cursor/rules/ and does not inherently recognize .claude/rules/. To bridge this gap, we use a symbolic link. By making .cursor/rules/ a symlink pointing to .claude/rules/, Cursor reads the files from the linked location while perceiving them as being in their expected directory.

Migarting Rules (Symlink Required)

Step 1: Transfer Content to .claude/rules/

First, copy the existing rule files to the new target directory.

# Ensure target directory exists
mkdir -p .claude/rules

# Copy existing rules
cp -r .cursor/rules/* .claude/rules/

Step 2: Replace Directory with Symlink

Remove the original directory and create a symbolic link in its place.

# Remove the physical directory
rm -rf .cursor/rules

# Create symbolic link pointing to .claude/rules
ln -s ../.claude/rules .cursor/rules

# Verify the link (should show the target path)
ls -la .cursor/rules

Step 3: Configure Git Ignore

Git should track the actual files, not the symlink itself. Add the symlink path to your .gitignore file.

# Add to .gitignore
echo ".cursor/rules" >> .gitignore

# Commit the changes
git add .claude/rules/ .gitignore
git commit -m "refactor: unify rules into .claude directory via symlink"

Migrating Skills (No Symlink Needed)

Step 1: Move Files to .claude/skills/

Create the destination folder and move the skill definitions.

mkdir -p .claude/skills
cp -r .cursor/skills/* .claude/skills/

Step 2: Clean Up Old Directory

Since Cursor will read directly from .claude/skills/, the old directory is no longer necessary.

rm -rf .cursor/skills

Step 3: Enable Native Detection in Cursor

Navigate to Cursor Settings, search for "Include third-party Plugins, Skills, and other configs", and enable the toggle. Cursor will now detect the skills in the .claude/ folder automatically.

Step 4: Commit Changes

git add .claude/skills/
git commit -m "refactor: unify skills into .claude directory"

Final Directory Structure

After migration, the project structure should resemble the following:

project-root/
├── .claude/
│   ├── rules/              # Real files, tracked by Git
│   │   ├── ts-rule.md
│   │   └── react-rule.md
│   └── skills/             # Real files, tracked by Git
│       ├── api-layer/
│       │   └── SKILL.md
│       └── ...
└── .cursor/
    └── rules -> ../.claude/rules   # Symlink (ignored by Git)

Going forward, maintain your definitions exclusively within the .claude/ directories.