What is deer-flow copilot-instructions.md?

An onboarding guide for DeerFlow, a full-stack AI agent application with a Python backend and a Next.js web frontend. It documents the required tools, repository commands, and local and Docker startup options.

Use it to prepare a development machine, start DeerFlow locally or with Docker, find build and test commands, and understand the main backend, frontend, and service components.

It gives contributors one verified starting point for understanding the system, installing its dependencies, and running or checking the application.

How bytedance/deer-flow configures GitHub Copilot

About the project

DeerFlow is an open-source super-agent harness that coordinates sub-agents, memory, tools, sandboxes, and extensible skills to handle research, coding, and content-creation tasks that may run for minutes or hours. It is intended for long-running, multi-step work performed by AI agents. The catalogue entries are skills, agents, and instructions that support its workflows.

bytedance/deer-flow · 84,291 stars · on GitHub · deerflow.tech

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to bytedance/deer-flow. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bytedance/deer-flow/main/.github/copilot-instructions.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bytedance/deer-flow

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/bytedance/deer-flow/copilot-instructions/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/bytedance/deer-flow/copilot-instructions)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/bytedance/deer-flow/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/bytedance/deer-flow/copilot-instructions/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/bytedance/deer-flow/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/bytedance/deer-flow/copilot-instructions.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 1,917 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 1,917 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.01917	$0.01917
Opus 5.5	$0.00767	$0.00767
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00383	$0.00383
Haiku 4.5	$0.00192	$0.00192

Measured 20d ago against content hash 75f5b2ca1736, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

deer-flow copilot-instructions.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 20d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

Copies of this mod

4 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

semantic-deer-flow copilot-instructions.md — 100% identical, 20 lines differ
omniHarness copilot-instructions.md — 91% identical, 38 lines differ
deer-flow-by-cc copilot-instructions.md — 89% identical, 24 lines differ
deerflow2.0-enhanced copilot-instructions.md — 89% identical, 24 lines differ

.github/copilot-instructions.md · 232 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 232 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Copilot Onboarding Instructions for DeerFlow

Use this file as the default operating guide for this repository. Follow it first, and only search the codebase when this file is incomplete or incorrect.

1) Repository Summary

DeerFlow is a full-stack "super agent harness".

Backend: Python 3.12, LangGraph + FastAPI gateway, sandbox/tool system, memory, MCP integration.
Frontend: Next.js 16 + React 19 + TypeScript + pnpm.
Local dev entrypoint: root Makefile starts backend + frontend + nginx on http://localhost:2026.
Docker dev entrypoint: make docker-* (mode-aware provisioner startup from config.yaml).

Current repo footprint is medium-large (backend service, frontend app, docker stack, skills library, docs).

2) Runtime and Toolchain Requirements

Validated in this repo on macOS:

Node.js >=22 (validated with Node 23.11.0)
pnpm (repo expects lockfile generated by pnpm 10; validated with pnpm 10.26.2 and 10.15.0)
Python >=3.12 (CI uses 3.12)
uv (validated with 0.7.20)
nginx (required for make dev unified local endpoint)

Always run from repo root unless a command explicitly says otherwise.

3) Build/Test/Lint/Run - Verified Command Sequences

These were executed and validated in this repository.

A. Bootstrap and install

Check prerequisites:

make check

Observed: passes when required tools are installed.

Install dependencies (recommended order: backend then frontend, as implemented by make install):

make install

B. Backend CI-equivalent validation

Run from backend/:

make lint
make test

Validated results:

make lint: pass (ruff check .)
make test: pass (277 passed, 15 warnings in ~76.6s)

CI parity:

.github/workflows/backend-unit-tests.yml runs on pull requests.
CI executes uv sync --group dev, then make lint, then make test in backend/.

C. Frontend validation

Run from frontend/.

Recommended reliable sequence:

pnpm lint
pnpm typecheck
BETTER_AUTH_SECRET=local-dev-secret pnpm build

Read the full file on GitHub · 232 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

20d ago Changed · +18 lines · +203 tokens per session 75f5b2ca1736
1mo ago First seen · 214 lines · 1,714 tokens per session scan A c0f1dabcd26d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

deer-flow copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository bytedance/deer-flow (84,291 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 1,917 tokens to every session, about $0.0077 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

agent agentic agentic-framework agentic-workflow ai ai-agents

vscode buildNext.instructions.md

Working notes and architecture documentation for the new esbuild-based build system in build/next. Use when making changes to the new build pipeline (transpile/bundle commands, NLS plugin, source-map handling, resource copying, or self-hosting watch tasks).

microsoft/vscode · 9,649 tokens

deer-flow: Instructions file for GitHub Copilot