Where agent instruction files come from
Four curated collections and one census, with the source URL and the read date on every cell.
Which one, and when
Pick by where the file came from, because that is the only thing these five actually disagree about. awesome-cursorrules, awesome-copilot, Claude Code Templates and .CursorRules all hold files written FOR the collection, by somebody who wanted to share one. RuleStack holds files read OUT of repositories that are running them, 7,205 of them counted on 2026-09-13. A written-for-the-list rule is a recommendation and is usually cleaner to copy; a counted file is evidence and is usually messier. If the agent is Copilot, awesome-copilot installs with a command and nothing else here does. If the agent is Claude Code and you want hooks and MCP entries as well as instructions, Claude Code Templates is the only one that carries them. If you are choosing what to put in your own file and want to know what is normal rather than what is recommended, that is the census, and the format ledger is one page over.
Where agent instruction files come from, row by row
Read 19 September 2026Every figure was read off the named company's own page on or since 19 September 2026. A job re-fetches each URL on a schedule and fails when a figure is no longer on the page it came from.
One paragraph per collection, in its own terms
Pick RuleStack when
You want to know what repositories actually wrote, not what somebody wrote for a list. Nothing here was submitted: a crawl reads instruction files where they already sit, keeps the owner, the repository and the path, and re-counts every night, so a format’s share is a count rather than an impression. The cost of that is the opposite of a curated list: the corpus holds bad files as well as good ones, because it is a census and not a selection.
Pick awesome-cursorrules when
You use Cursor, you want a rule for a named stack, and you want it to be one file you can read end to end before you commit it. It holds 257 files under rules/, each a complete .mdc rather than a fragment, and it is the collection most other lists point at. Read the commit date before you copy one: its own repository record says the last push was 2026-05-30, so a rule written against an older Cursor is still sitting there looking current.
Pick awesome-copilot when
GitHub Copilot is the agent, and you would rather install a bundle than paste a file. It is the only collection here published under the github organisation itself, and the only one with a package manager in front of it: `copilot plugin install <plugin-name>@awesome-copilot`. It also holds four kinds of thing rather than one, so an instruction file, an agent and a skill arrive from the same place.
Pick Claude Code Templates when
Claude Code is the agent and you want the whole configuration rather than one file. It is the only entry here that ships hooks, MCP server entries and settings beside the instructions, and the only one with a browser in front of a CLI, so you can read a component on the site and install it without cloning anything.
Pick .CursorRules when
You want to read a rule in a browser, with the file body on the page, before deciding whether it is worth having. It is the only entry here that is a website first rather than a repository, it splits its index by the two Cursor generations, and it takes a submission through a form instead of a pull request.
A curated list has a date on it, and the date is the risk
A rule in a curated list is correct on the day it was written and stays on the page afterwards. Nothing about a file in a list tells a reader that the tool it describes has changed underneath it, and every collection here looks equally current in a browser.
Read on 19 September 2026 from each project’s own repository record: awesome-cursorrules last took a push on 2026-05-30, awesome-copilot on 2026-09-18 and Claude Code Templates on 2026-09-19. Those are three very different answers to the same question, and the list with the most stars is the one that has moved least. The same reading is why this page prints a read date on every cell instead of one date at the bottom.
cursor.directory is not a column on this page
Every request to it this session answered HTTP 429 behind a Vercel security checkpoint, so nothing it publishes could be confirmed. A figure about a named company that nobody read is the one kind of error a comparison page cannot detect on its own, so it is absent rather than estimated.
One question, one answer, nothing collapsed
What is the best alternative to awesome-cursorrules?
It depends on which agent reads the file, and that decides it more than quality does. For GitHub Copilot the direct equivalent is awesome-copilot, published under the github organisation itself, holding 194 files under instructions/ and installable with copilot plugin install. For Claude Code it is Claude Code Templates, which ships agents, commands, skills, MCP entries and hooks together. For Cursor specifically, .CursorRules is the browser-first option and prints the rule body on the index page. One thing to check before copying from any curated list: awesome-cursorrules holds 257 files under rules/ and its own repository record showed a last push of 2026-05-30 when this page was written, so a rule in it may predate the Cursor behaviour it describes. Every figure here was read on 2026-09-19.
Is a curated rules list better than counting what repositories actually use?
They answer different questions and the failure mode is using one for the other. A curated list answers "what should I write", and the answer has been cleaned up by somebody who cared. A census answers "what do people write", and the answer includes every file that is too long, contradicts itself, or was copied from a blog post. The census is the one that can tell you a share: that a given format appears in a given fraction of indexed repositories is a count, and no curated list is in a position to make that statement about itself. Use the list to find a starting file. Use the count to decide whether a format, a section or a length is normal.
Do any of these cost money?
None of the three with a published licence. awesome-cursorrules is CC0-1.0, awesome-copilot is MIT and Claude Code Templates is MIT, all read from their own repository pages on 2026-09-19, and all three are free to use. RuleStack is free and needs no account. .CursorRules publishes no price and no licence on the pages read, which is not the same as saying there is none, and is the question to ask before shipping one of its rules in a commercial repository.
Why is cursor.directory not in the table?
Because it could not be read. Every request to it this session returned HTTP 429 behind a Vercel security checkpoint, so nothing it publishes could be confirmed, and stating a figure about a named company from memory is how a comparison page ends up wrong in a way nobody notices. The rule on this page is the same one the format ledger uses: a cell carries the URL it was read off and the day it was read, or it does not exist.
Which file should I write if I only write one?
That is a format question rather than a collection question, and it is the one the rest of this site is built to answer with counts instead of opinions. The comparison ledger puts all eight formats side by side with what each vendor asserts above what the nightly measured, and each format page carries its own adoption share, median length and section mix on the night it was counted. The corpus held 7,205 files on 2026-09-13.