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Cursor · Dual-track policy

Transition from Cursor-only shipping: keep velocity while review becomes mandatory

A transition from Cursor-centric delivery is a phased policy change, not a ban on AI assist. You keep using agents for drafts while the remote repo, required checks, and promote rights become the real control plane. Teams that flip overnight either stall or invent shadow releases that bypass the new gates.

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CodeCross LLC frames transition-from-cursor as a dual-track period: Cursor remains allowed for authoring; CI, branch protection, and human review become non-negotiable for anything that reaches shared environments. Intent is durable ownership, not editor migration theater. The ship gate is two consecutive production promotes executed from CI by different operators, each with passing tests and a documented rollback, after secrets were removed from local-only workflows.

Why Cursor transition is its own URL

Policy can change without banning the editor overnight

Get-off and migrate assume you are ready to retire laptop-only shipping. Many teams are not. They are ready to make review mandatory while agents still draft.

  • Force-push to the release branch still works

    If “I’ll just apply it locally” still ships, the transition has not started. Ban direct pushes. Keep a short hotfix allowlist with post-hoc review.

  • A fifty-check wishlist trains people to route around CI

    Start with secret scanning, lint/typecheck, and the smallest meaningful suite on auth, payments, and migrations. Grow gates that catch the last three incidents.

  • Production secrets still appear in agent context

    Move to short-lived tokens and CI-injected env. Make “secrets in the prompt” an explicit incident category during the dual-track window.

  • On-call docs still say open the editor and ask the agent

    When a bad agent-assisted merge ships, the response should be mechanical rollback—not a longer prompt.

The dual-track we actually keep

Let agents draft; let CI and two operators decide

Cursor stays allowed for authoring. Anything that reaches shared environments goes through required checks. Secrets leave local-only workflows before promote rights go team-wide.

01

Require a PR with checks even when Cursor wrote 90%

Production-bound changes land as reviews. Direct pushes to the release branch die on day one of the dual-track.

02

Add CODEOWNERS on the paths that already hurt

Auth, payments, migrations first. Expand coverage once the habit sticks—do not begin with a gate list nobody will honor.

03

Rotate anything that lived in chat logs or shared .env files

Short-lived tokens. CI-injected env for staging and production. Prompt-paste becomes an incident, not a shrug.

04

Practice promote-previous on staging weekly

Two people can read CI failure logs and revert. The ship gate is two consecutive production promotes by different operators.

How to

Transition from Cursor-only shipping without an overnight ban

Durable ownership, not editor theater. Success is two CI promotes by different operators after secrets leave local-only workflows.

  1. Step 01

    Let agents draft; require PRs for anything that ships

    Required checks on production-bound changes even when Cursor wrote most of the diff. Ban direct pushes to the release branch.

  2. Step 02

    Grow the first review gates from recent incidents

    Secret scanning, lint/typecheck, and tests on auth, payments, or migrations. CODEOWNERS on those paths. Do not start with fifty checks.

  3. Step 03

    Stop pasting production secrets into agent context

    Short-lived tokens. CI-injected env. Rotate chat-log and Slack-shared `.env` values. Treat prompt leaks as incidents during the dual-track.

  4. Step 04

    Practice promote-previous on staging every week

    On-call runbooks must not say “open Cursor and ask the agent.” Two people read CI logs and revert.

  5. Step 05

    Prove two consecutive CI promotes by different operators

    Passing tests, documented rollback, secrets no longer local-only. That is the ship gate—not a policy memo.

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Practical answers

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How do you dual-track Cursor authoring and remote release authority?

Let agents draft; let CI decide. Require every production-bound change to land as a PR with required checks—even if Cursor wrote 90% of the diff. Ban direct pushes to the release branch. Keep a short allowlist of hotfixes with post-hoc review. If “I’ll just apply it locally and force-push” still works, the transition has not started.

What review gates should appear first in a Cursor transition?

Start with secret scanning, lint/typecheck, and the smallest meaningful test suite on PRs that touch auth, payments, or migrations. Add CODEOWNERS for those paths. Expand coverage once the habit sticks. Do not begin with a fifty-check wishlist that trains people to route around CI—grow gates that catch the failures your last three incidents shared.

How should secrets and env handling change during the transition?

Stop pasting production secrets into agent context. Move to short-lived tokens and CI-injected env for staging and production. Rotate anything that lived in chat logs or local `.env` files shared over Slack. Make “secrets in the prompt” an explicit incident category during the dual-track window so the new habit has teeth.

What rollback and on-call habits prove the transition worked?

Practice promote-previous on staging weekly during the dual-track. Ensure on-call runbooks do not say “open Cursor and ask the agent.” Confirm two people can read CI failure logs and revert. When a bad agent-assisted merge ships, the response should be mechanical rollback—not a longer prompt.

Keep agent speed. Make review the control plane.

Bring the release branch and two people who can promote. We will name the first gate — and the rollback that is not a longer prompt.

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