Current Usage of cursorrules in iOS Development (2025.Mar.10th)

Since Cursor introduced the Agent mode, I have been extensively using cursorrules for development. Of course, now development can be done with various prompts, and the MCP server has not yet been set up. But let’s start with cursorrules first. Currently, there are some great awesome cursorrules available online.

Awesome CursorRules

SwiftUI CursorRules

However, there are no iOS UIKit cursorrules in the current repository, so I am drafting one here

I have submitted a PR to the repository owner, and we can observe the progress. Once the PR is merged, there will be iOS UIKit cursorrules available. However, I have removed the VM section from it. This guideline was formulated based on our company’s codebase style, and the use of ViewModel may not reach a consensus with the wider iOS developer community, so I excluded the ViewModel practice when submitting it.

iOS - UIKit cursorrules

// Start of Selection  
  
you are an expert in coding with swift, iOS, UIKit. you always write maintainable code and clean code.  
focus on latest documentation and features.  
your descriptions should be short and concise.  
don't remove any comments.  

UIKit UI Design Principles:  
1. **Auto Layout:** Implement responsive layouts using SnapKit only (avoid NSLayoutConstraint for better readability), support Dynamic Type and Safe Area.  
2. **Programmatic UI:** Avoid Storyboards/XIBs, implement all UI components directly in code (UIView, UIButton, UITableViewCell). Use view composition and custom view subclasses for reusability.  
3. **UI Components must not directly access models or DTOs.** Use ViewController, Factory, or Builder patterns following OOP/MVC/MVVM principles. Below are good and bad practice examples:  

**Good Practice:**  
```swift  
let user = User(name: "Alice", email: "john@example.com")  
let factory = UserFactory()  
/// This way UserView doesn't access User model directly, following Apple's MVC principles  
let userView = factory.createUserView(user: user)  

Bad Practice:

let user = User(name: "Alice", email: "john@example.com")  
/// This exposes UserView to User model, violating MVC principles  
let userView = UserView(user: user)  

1. Every UIViewController should have a corresponding ViewModel that handles all UI-related logic. Follow naming conventions: if the VC is named UserListViewController, the ViewModel should be named UserListViewModel. Communication between UIViewController and ViewModel should use closures.

class UserListViewModel {  
    let users: [User]  
    var didFetchUsers: (() -> Void)?  
    func fetchUsers() {  
        // fetch users from network  
        didFetchUsers?()  
    }  
}  

class UserListViewController: UIViewController {  
    private lazy var viewModel: UserListViewModel = {  
        let viewModel = UserListViewModel()  
        viewModel.didFetchUsers = { [weak self] in  
            guard let self else { return }  
            tableView.reloadData()  
        }  
        return viewModel  
    }()  
    let tableView = UITableView()  
}  

1. UI components should pass events using closures, and the closure must pass self as a parameter to allow external objects to identify the source component.

class SampleView: UIView {  
    var didTapButton: ((SampleView) -> Void)?  
    private let button = UIButton()  
    override init(frame: CGRect) {  
        super.init(frame: frame)  
        setupUI()  
        button.addTarget(self, action: #selector(buttonTapped), for: .touchUpInside)  
    }  

    private func setupUI() {  
        // setup UI  
    }  

    @objc private func buttonTapped() {  
        didTapButton?(self)  
    }  
}  

File Structure

Each Scene is an independent module containing ViewController and ViewModel. UITableViewCell should be placed under UI/Elements. For future page requirements, each page will have its own dedicated directory containing ViewController and ViewModel.

Project  
├── UI  
│   ├── MainTabBar  
│   │   ├── ViewControllers  
│   │   ├── ViewModels  
│   │   └── Views  
│   ├── Scenes  
│   │   ├── ArticleFeed  
│   │   │   ├── ViewController  
│   │   │   ├── ViewModel  
│   │   │   
│   │   │   
│   │   └── UserProfile  
│   │       ├── ViewController  
│   │       ├── ViewModel  
│   │       
│   │