Hegel Companion

Dialectical companion for AI-assisted development.

Hegel sits alongside your Cursor IDE sessions and provides real-time critical thinking oversight — catching lazy prompts, flagging overconfident AI responses, tracking session quality degradation, and nudging you to maintain engineering rigor.

Named after Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's dialectical method: every thesis (your prompt) deserves an antithesis (critical review) before reaching synthesis (better code).

Two-Layer Analysis

Layer 1: Fast Rule-Based Checks (command hooks)

Runs in milliseconds, zero cost. Always active.

• Detects vague/lazy prompts ("fix it", "do the same", single-word confirmations)
• Catches prompt quality degradation over the session
• Flags rapid-fire prompting without review pauses
• Tracks scope creep and untested changes
• Detects overconfident AI language and sycophancy patterns
• Session fatigue warnings

Layer 2: LLM Deep Analysis (prompt hooks)

Uses your Cursor subscription models. Optional, configurable.

• Nuanced prompt quality evaluation beyond pattern matching
• Contextual assessment of whether a prompt has enough detail for its intent
• AI response review for missing edge cases, security blind spots, and scope creep
• Detects when you're blindly continuing from a previous AI response

Setup

Install via npm

The easiest way to install Hegel into your Cursor project is using npx:

npx hegel-companion init .

This single command will:

1. Generate .cursor/hooks.json to wire up the analysis layers.
2. Scaffold a default hegel.config.json in your project root.
3. Register the hegel-mcp server in .cursor/mcp.json.
4. Install the Hegel Cursor extension for the sidebar dashboard.
5. Add a .cursor/rules/hegel-companion.mdc rule so the AI knows how to use the MCP tools.

Configure

The easiest way to configure Hegel is through the Cursor Settings UI:

1. Open Settings (Cmd/Ctrl + ,)
2. Search for "Hegel"
3. Adjust your model, strictness, and other preferences.

These settings automatically sync to a hegel.config.json file in your project root, which you can commit to version control to share team-wide standards.

(Note: Configuration changes are automatically detected when you start a new chat session).

Architecture

Hegel operates as a local, privacy-first system:

• Hooks: Intercepts prompts and responses via Cursor's .cursor/hooks.json.
• State: Session state is stored locally in .hegel-state/ as JSON files.
• MCP Server: Provides hegel-status and hegel-review tools to the AI.
• Cursor Extension: Reads the local state to power the sidebar dashboard and status bar.

Philosophy

"The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk." — Hegel, Philosophy of Right

Unlike Minerva's owl, Hegel doesn't wait for dusk. It watches in real time, helping you think critically during the creative process, not only in retrospect.

License

MIT