Windsurf Rules & Memories
https://docs.windsurf.com/windsurf/cascade/memories
Rules files plus Cascade auto-generated memories. "Fast Context" RAG using SWE-grep models; ~100K-token effective context.
At a glance
- Type
- Codebase semantic + auto-memory
- Tier
- T1
- Section
- File-backed / editor paradigms
- Created
- 2024-11 (Windsurf Editor launched November 2024; Cascade Memories feature included at launch)
- Latest release
- not applicable — not OSS
- License
- not applicable — not OSS
- GitHub
- not applicable — no GitHub repo
- Pricing
- not applicable — not commercial
- Funding
- not applicable — not commercial
Taxonomy
- storage
- file
- retrieval
- injection
- persistence
- cross-session
- update
- overwrite
- unit
- document
- governance
- user-controllable
- conflict
- llm-arbitrate
When to use
Optimised for: simplicity / git-versioned / human-readable
Anti-fit: not for non-coding / non-IDE use cases
Pros & cons
Pros
Two-tier model — explicit rules + implicit auto-memory — covers both curated and emergent guidance; Codeium ecosystem maturity.
Cons
Auto-memory layer is opaque (no inspect UI); rules + memories together can compound into context bloat.
Claims & capabilities
Windsurf at 9.4% market share (2026); .windsurfrules + Memories pattern follows the same project-config-as-markdown approach as Cursor and Claude Code; smaller community than Cursor/Claude Code
Technical surface
- API surface
- not applicable — IDE feature
- Backend storage
- file (.windsurfrules / global memories)
- Deployment
- not applicable — not a deployable product
- Embedding model
- not applicable — rules file
- Multi-tenancy
- hard-isolation
- MCP
- not applicable — file-as-memory paradigm (no API surface)
- A2A
- not applicable — file-as-memory paradigm
- OpenTelemetry
- not applicable — file-as-memory paradigm
Compare Windsurf Rules & Memories with…
Similar systems
Other file-backed / editor paradigms in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Cline .clinerules T2
.clinerules single file or .clinerules/ directory of numbered .md files (e.g. 01-style.md ). Global at ~/.cline/rules/ . Files version-controlled and AI-editable — Cline can write back. Toggleable per-session via UI.
- AGENTS.md T1
AGENTS.md at repo root (and ~/.codex/AGENTS.md for global); hierarchical concatenation from root to cwd. Persists build/test commands, conventions, architecture overview, security constraints, git workflow.
- Aider CONVENTIONS.md / .aider.conf.yml T2
CONVENTIONS.md (any name, loaded via --read or read: in config); .aider.conf.yml (home / git-root / cwd, last wins); .aiderignore (gitignore-syntax).
- CLAUDE.md T1
Markdown file injected at session start; reloaded post-compaction. Document-as-memory: human-readable, version-controlled, no extraction or vector store. Anthropic-canonical pattern; equivalent emerges in Cursor / Windsurf.
- Cline Memory Bank T2
memory-bank/ directory of Markdown: projectBrief.md , productContext.md , activeContext.md , systemPatterns.md , techContext.md , progress.md . Loaded in full at start of every task. Compensates for context-window reset between sessions.
- Continue.dev .continue/rules T2
.continue/rules/*.md at workspace root. YAML frontmatter: name , globs (file-pattern trigger), alwaysApply , description . Loaded lexicographically.