Stop Overengineering Your React Apps

You're spending more time wrestling with complex abstractions than building features. Your TypeScript interfaces have inheritance chains three levels deep. Your React components are doing twelve different things. Your utils folder has become a graveyard of "maybe we'll need this someday" functions.

It's time to embrace radical simplicity.

The Real Problem: Complexity Debt

Every React developer has been there. You start with a simple feature, but then you think "what if we need to extend this?" So you add interfaces for extensibility. Then you create wrapper components for reusability. Before you know it, your simple user profile component has become a generic data-rendering framework that nobody understands.

The result? You spend 40% of your time navigating your own abstractions instead of shipping features. New team members take weeks to contribute meaningful code. Bug fixes that should take minutes require archaeological expeditions through your component hierarchy.

This isn't just about writing less code—it's about writing code that works with your brain, not against it.

The KISS-TS-React Solution

These Cursor Rules implement the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) specifically for TypeScript and React development. They guide your AI assistant to write code that solves today's problem with the smallest, clearest solution possible.

Instead of generating complex abstractions that might be useful someday, you get:

// What your AI generates WITH these rules
interface UserCardProps {
  user: User;
  onEdit: () => void;
}

function UserCard({ user, onEdit }: UserCardProps) {
  return (
    <div className="user-card">
      <h3>{user.name}</h3>
      <p>{user.email}</p>
      <button onClick={onEdit}>Edit</button>
    </div>
  );
}

// Instead of this over-engineered mess
interface BaseCardProps<T> {
  data: T;
  renderer: CardRenderer<T>;
  actions?: ActionConfig[];
}

class GenericCard<T> extends React.Component<BaseCardProps<T>> {
  // 50 lines of abstraction for a simple card...
}

The rules ensure every AI-generated solution follows a strict hierarchy: solve the immediate problem first, add complexity only when profiling or user experience proves it's necessary.

Transform Your Development Workflow

Before: Fighting Your Own Code

• Feature Request: "Add user status to the profile card"
• Time Spent: 2 hours figuring out which of your 5 abstraction layers to modify
• Result: Changed 8 files, broke 3 tests, still not sure if it's the "right" way

After: Straight-Line Problem Solving

• Feature Request: "Add user status to the profile card"
• Time Spent: 15 minutes adding status to the interface and rendering it
• Result: One component modified, tests pass, feature shipped

Real Impact on Daily Tasks

Writing New Components: Your AI generates focused, single-purpose components instead of flexible-but-complex abstractions. A simple modal stays a simple modal until you actually need modal variants.

Debugging Issues: When something breaks, you're looking at 20 lines of clear logic instead of traversing a maze of generic wrappers and higher-order components.

Code Reviews: Team members understand changes immediately instead of spending 30 minutes deciphering your custom abstraction pattern.

Refactoring: Changes stay local. Need to modify how users are displayed? You touch the UserCard component, not a generic data renderer plus three configuration objects.

Implementation Guide

1. Install the Rules

Copy the configuration into your .cursorrules file in your project root:

# In your project root
touch .cursorrules
# Paste the KISS-TS-React configuration

2. Configure Your Development Environment

The rules work best with this minimal setup:

// tsconfig.json
{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "strict": true,
    "target": "ES2022",
    "module": "ESNext"
  }
}

// .eslintrc.js
module.exports = {
  extends: ["@typescript-eslint/recommended"],
  rules: {
    "max-lines": ["error", 200],
    "@typescript-eslint/no-explicit-any": "error"
  }
};

3. Start Building Simply

Ask your AI to build features with phrases like:

• "Create a simple user profile component"
• "Add basic form validation for this signup form"
• "Write a straightforward API client for user data"

The rules will guide it toward minimal, clear solutions.

4. Refactor Existing Code

Use prompts like:

• "Simplify this component by removing unnecessary abstractions"
• "Break this large function into single-purpose utilities"
• "Remove unused interfaces and consolidate similar types"

Measurable Results

Faster Feature Development: Teams report 40-60% faster feature delivery when components have single responsibilities and minimal interdependencies.

Reduced Bug Count: Simpler code has fewer places for bugs to hide. Less complexity means fewer edge cases and interaction bugs.

Faster Onboarding: New developers contribute meaningful code within days instead of weeks because they're not learning your custom abstraction framework.

Easier Maintenance: Changes stay local. Modifying user display logic doesn't require understanding your entire component architecture.

Better Test Coverage: Simple, focused functions are easy to test. You'll write more tests because testing becomes straightforward, not an exercise in mock orchestration.

Stop Tomorrow's Problems From Hijacking Today's Code

Most development complexity comes from solving problems you don't have yet. These rules keep your AI focused on the problem in front of you, using the simplest solution that works.

When you actually need more complexity—when profiling shows a performance bottleneck, when you're truly building the same thing for the third time—then you add it. But not before.

Your codebase becomes a tool that amplifies your productivity instead of fighting it. Your team ships features instead of architecting abstractions. Your React apps become maintainable, understandable, and actually fun to work on.

The best code is code that solves problems clearly and gets out of your way. These rules ensure that's exactly what your AI assistant builds for you.