Solo on GCP. Cursor is my second engineer — if I write the rules first
I'm solo-shipping a real D2C stack on GCP — not a landing page:
- Cloud Run API (Node 22 / Express 4)
- Cloud SQL + Prisma
- Upstash Redis (BullMQ, rate limits, cart)
- Firebase Hosting (storefront + admin ERP)
- Razorpay/Shiprocket webhooks, Cloud Scheduler, Cloud Build
No team. No Docker locally (WSL2). Goal: ship without breaking checkout.
What actually works with Cursor:
.cursorrules— pinned versions (Express 4, Prisma 5), paise not floats, API response shape, never migrate prod locallyUpdates.txt— one bullet per prod incident so the next session doesn't start from zero- One task per session — "fix expense migration" not "improve admin"
Cursor is fast when context is structured. Dangerous when you say "just fix prod."
Aside — the deploy that almost broke prod:
We moved off Memorystore + VPC connector to Upstash (rediss://). Deleted the connector. Deployed. New revision: connect ETIMEDOUT. Health red. Checkout dead.
Not an app bug. Two footguns:
prisma-migratejob still referenced the deleted VPC connector- Manual deploy pulled
redis-url:latest(placeholder) instead ofredis-url:4(real Upstash URL)
In Cursor: pasted Cloud Run logs, pointed at cloudbuild.yaml + startup order. Traced BullMQ importing at module load before Redis was ready. Fix: workers boot after ensureRedisReady, pin redis-url:4 in Cloud Build, --clear-vpc-connector on the migrate job.
Smaller one: Prisma P2022 — API shipped before migration ran. Expense.status missing → 500 on "Add Expense." Re-ran migrate job; added rule: migration before traffic shift.
Honest limits: zero automated tests; Cursor will wire the wrong webhook field if you don't document it (channel_order_id = display ID, not UUID). You still read every diff.
For infra glue — Cloud Build flags, migration order, "why is prod 500" — it's the first tool where solo feels survivable.
Full transparency: I'm bootstrapping this — no funding, no team — and Cursor Pro is a real line item. They have a referral program; if you're already planning to try it, my link gives us both a bit of credit: https://cursor.com/referral?code=MIBRU4HJHP1W
I'd share this post either way. The .cursorrules + session log setup matter more than any link. Happy to answer questions on GCP solo ops or how I structure rules files.
Anyone else solo on GCP + Cursor? What's in your rules file vs your head?