The project provides a collection of System prompts for Java Enterprise development that help software engineers in their daily programming work and data pipelines.
The available System prompts for Java cover aspects like Build system based on Maven, Design, Coding, Testing, Refactoring & JMH Benchmarking, Performance testing with JMeter, Profiling with Async profiler/OpenJDK tools, Documentation & Diagrams.
The repository was designed to support Cursor, but other tools have evolved and now offer better support for system prompts. The repository runs regular regression tests for IDEs and tools such as Cursor, Cursor CLI, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, and JetBrains Junie.
A system prompt is a set of instructions given to an AI model that defines how it should behave, what role it should take on, and what guidelines it should follow when responding to users. Think of it as the "operating manual" that shapes the AI's personality, capabilities, and boundaries.
The repository provides System prompts that can behave interactively or non-interactively, depending on how the user employs them.
- System prompts:
Create a UML class diagram with @170-java-documentation without asking questionsorAdd the Maven Enforcer plugin using the rule @112-java-maven-plugins without asking questions - Interactive System Prompts: Prompts that ask questions and include conditional logic. Examples:
Improve the pom.xml using the cursor rule @112-java-maven-pluginsorGenerate technical documentation and diagrams about the project with the cursor rule @170-java-documentation
- Consultative Interactive: Prompts that suggest alternatives to improve software development. Examples:
Improve the class/classes added in the context applying the system prompt @128-java-generics with the behaviour @behaviour-consultative-interactionorImprove the class/classes added in the context applying the system prompt @131-java-unit-testing with the behaviour @behaviour-consultative-interaction - Progressive Learning: Using the system prompts, you can generate courses about a particular topic to better understand the changes generated by models. Example:
Create a course about @128-java-generics.md using the behavior @behaviour-progressive-learning.md and place the course in @courses
Adding AI tools to the Java development workflow can increase the likelihood of implementing software specifications on time and with quality.
Adding AI tools to your data pipeline can provide new opportunities to deliver more value (examples: automatic coding, code refactoring, continuous profiling, and others).
New to this repository? Start with our comprehensive guide for a quick introduction to setting up and using the Cursor rules, then read about how to integrate system prompts into your development workflow to maximize their effectiveness in your daily coding tasks. For a full understanding of this project, follow the course Mastering System Prompts for Java.
Explore the complete catalog of available System prompts to discover the full range of capabilities and find the perfect rules for your specific use cases.
The cursor rules in this repository follow The Three-Node Quality Framework for AI Prompts, which ensures both comprehensive responses and safe execution. This framework consists of three distinct pillars: constraints, output-format and safeguards. Each node operates at different phases of the AI interaction timeline, creating a defense-in-depth strategy.
The constraints act as gate-keeping mechanisms that define hard requirements and blocking conditions before any work begins - essentially asking "Can I start?" The output-format provides prescriptive guidance during execution, ensuring comprehensive coverage and organized responses by defining "What should I deliver?" Finally, safeguards implement protective measures throughout and after execution, continuously asking "Did it work safely?" This temporal flow from pre-execution validation to structured execution to continuous monitoring ensures quality at every stage.
This framework transforms AI from a general assistant into a specialized consultant with built-in quality controls and safety measures, making it particularly suitable for critical applications like Java software development. By embedding domain-specific expertise directly into the prompt structure, the cursor rules provide predictable, comprehensive, and safe interactions while reducing cognitive load for developers and ensuring system integrity throughout the development process.
From the outset, be aware that the results provided by interactions with the different Cursor rules are not deterministic due to the nature of the models, but this can be mitigated with clear goals and validation checkpoints.
Models are able to generate code, but they cannot run code with your local data. To address this limitation, some prompts provide scripts to bridge this gap on the model side.
If you have great ideas, read the following document to contribute.
The repository includes a collection of examples where you can explore the possibilities of these system prompts designed for Java.
- ADR-001: Generate Cursor Rules from XML Files
- ADR-002: Configure Cursor Rules Manual Scope
- ADR-003: Website Generation with JBake
- Review the CHANGELOG for further details
Java uses JEPs as the vehicle to describe new features to be added to the language. The repository continuously reviews which JEPs could improve any of the cursor rules present in this repository.
- https://agents.md/
- https://www.cursor.com/
- https://cursor.com/cli
- https://docs.cursor.com/context/rules
- https://docs.cursor.com/context/@-symbols/@-cursor-rules
- https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code
- https://github.com/features/copilot
- https://www.jetbrains.com/junie/
- https://openjdk.org/jeps/0
- https://github.com/jabrena/101-cursor
- https://github.com/jabrena/pml
- https://github.com/jabrena/cursor-rules-agile
- https://github.com/jabrena/cursor-rules-java
- https://github.com/jabrena/cursor-rules-spring-boot
- https://github.com/jabrena/cursor-rules-examples
- https://github.com/jabrena/plantuml-to-png-cli
- https://github.com/jabrena/setup-cli
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