1 min lesson
Context, indexing, rules & MCP
Use "Almost every 'bad answer' ticket is a context failure wearing a model-quality costume" to say what you would do next.
Step 1 of 4
Almost every "bad answer" ticket is a context failure wearing a model-quality costume.
The model only sees what the pipeline hands it. When retrieval misses the relevant file, when indexing is stale or when a rule quietly rewrites the instructions, the output looks confidently wrong and the user blames intelligence. Your job is to walk the pipeline and find where the right information dropped out.
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Full explanation
The Context Pipeline
Interactive diagram. Step through it with the Next and Previous controls below, or Tab to a region to read its detail.
Walk it left to right and place the failure on a step. The two gates - indexing and rules - are what to check before blaming the model.
Failed or partial indexing is one of the most common root causes of "it doesn't know my codebase." Check it before you suspect the model.
Have the user confirm the index built (and finished) and that the repo isn't excluded by .gitignore/.cursorignore or too large to fully index. A re-index resolves a surprising share of "bad answer" tickets.
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Optional practice
Practice: Context, indexing, rules & MCP
QAn enterprise developer reports that Cursor "ignores half my codebase" and only references the file that's open. List the pipeline stages you'd check, in order and name the two you'd suspect first.