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How to convert Cursor rules to Claude Code

Quick answer: A Cursor rule is Markdown with Cursor-specific frontmatter (globs, alwaysApply) and an .mdc extension. To convert one for Claude Code: strip those two frontmatter fields, change the extension to .md, and either merge the content into CLAUDE.md or save it as a skill. Or skip the manual work — Desastre does the conversion in one click.

Why the formats don't match

Both tools speak Markdown, but they disagree on everything around it:

CursorClaude Code
File extension.mdc.md
Global location~/.cursor/rules/~/.claude/CLAUDE.md or ~/.claude/skills/
Project location.cursor/rules/CLAUDE.md or .claude/skills/
Scopingglobs frontmatter per ruleNo glob scoping — instructions are always-on, skills load on demand
Always-on switchalwaysApply: trueAnything in CLAUDE.md is always on

So "conversion" is really a routing decision: an alwaysApply rule belongs in CLAUDE.md; a descriptive, situational rule maps naturally to a Claude Code skill with its description intact.

Converting by hand

  1. Open the .mdc file and delete the globs and alwaysApply lines from the frontmatter. Keep name and description.
  2. If the rule was alwaysApply: true, paste the body into your project's CLAUDE.md (or ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md for global rules).
  3. Otherwise, save it as .claude/skills/<rule-name>/SKILL.md so Claude Code loads it when the description matches the task.
  4. Repeat for every rule, in every repo, without overwriting anything that's already there.

Step 4 is where this stops being a five-minute job. There are CLI tools (rule-porter, rulesync) that batch-convert a single repo, but they assume you remember which repos have rules worth converting in the first place.

Converting in one click with Desastre

Desastre handles both the finding and the converting:

  1. Scan. Desastre lists every Cursor rule on your machine — global and per-project, including repos you forgot about, even legacy .cursorrules files.
  2. Pick. Preview any rule with its frontmatter rendered as a clean header.
  3. Copy. Hit "Copy to tool…", choose Claude Code, done. The .mdc becomes .md, Cursor-only frontmatter is stripped, and the file lands where Claude Code reads it. If a file already exists at the destination, Desastre flags the conflict and refuses to overwrite — it never destroys anything.
Desastre's Copy to tool sheet converting a config between AI tools, showing which destinations are ready and which have conflicts

It works in the other direction too — Claude Code agents to Cursor, rules to Windsurf or Continue.dev — and the same one-click copy moves skills, agents, instructions and JSON-based MCP configs between 19 supported tools, always same-scope (global→global, project→project) so nothing leaks across repos.

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Desastre — AI config manager for Mac

Find every rule you've written, then move it to any tool in one click. $1.99, one time — cheaper than the coffee you'd drink converting them by hand.

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