---
title: "Onboard a New Developer to a Repository Using Cursor Commands"
type: post
url: "https://robotpaper.ai/using-cursor-commands-to-onboard-a-new-developer-to-a-repository/"
canonical: "https://robotpaper.ai/using-cursor-commands-to-onboard-a-new-developer-to-a-repository/"
markdown_url: "https://robotpaper.ai/using-cursor-commands-to-onboard-a-new-developer-to-a-repository.md"
published: "2025-09-09T06:01:07.000+00:00"
updated: "2026-10-22T21:57:54.000+00:00"
tags: ["Cursor", "Developer-Experience"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
author_links: ["https://robotpaper.ai", "https://x.com/royosherove", "https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/", "https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7", "https://robotpaper.ai/about-roy.md"]
description: "Use Cursor custom commands like /get-started to onboard a new developer: read the README, install mise, set up the environment and show what to do next."
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original post)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Onboard a New Developer to a Repository Using Cursor Commands

Now that cursor has added the [concept of custom commands,](https://docs.cursor.com/en/agent/chat/commands) we can put stuff like this in our repository:

```markdown
.cursor/commands/get-started.md:

# Initialize Dev Environment for developer

- greet the developer who's about to use this project, and ask if it's ok to setup the new dev environment for them (detail what you'll do)
if they say ok, then:

- read the readme.md file in the root
- install mise tool (if it's not already installed)
- then run "mise install"
- use mise.toml to find any new commands you can use if you need to, and guide the devloper what they can do next to continue working with this repo
```

and ask developers to use '/get-started' when they first clone a repository locally.

Here's the output I get when I run /get-started in my repo chat:  

![Cursor /get-started command output introducing the project and proposed setup steps](https://robotpaper.ai/content/images/2025/09/image-15.png)

In this case, we're using [mise-en-place](https://mise.jdx.dev/) tool to standardize how all our repos are onboarded by developers, but with cursor custom commands - we can easily build an interactive wizard that is very smart that helps developers onboard into a new repo. and the prompt can be as complicated as we want, if the project is complex.

As the script finishes, we get this:

![Onboarding summary after setup: project understanding, next steps and available mise commands](https://robotpaper.ai/content/images/2025/09/image-16.png)

We can also use it to standardize other tools like [The Auditor](https://github.com/TheAuditorTool/Auditor) to set up security scanning tools or anything else. just with a prompt.

I love this type of usability upgrade for developers.

---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove** - Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

-   [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
-   [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
-   [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
-   [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
-   [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
-   [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

-   X: [https://x.com/royosherove](https://x.com/royosherove)
-   LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/)

### Contact

-   Contact form: [https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7](https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7)

### License

Content on robotpaper.ai is licensed under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/): reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original post).

More about Roy and his other sites and projects: [https://robotpaper.ai/about-roy.md](https://robotpaper.ai/about-roy.md)