Getting it into your agent
One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.
npx agentmods add instructions/damianedwards/copilotd/copilot-instructionsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/DamianEdwards/copilotdWhat 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 | $0.01292 | $0.01292 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00646 | $0.00646 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00258 | $0.00258 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00129 | $0.00129 |
Grade A, and why
copilotd 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 2d 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 98 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Copilot Instructions for copilotd
Build & Run
# Build
dotnet build src/copilotd/copilotd.csproj
# Run from source (auto-builds and passes all args through)
./copilotd.sh <command> # macOS/Linux
.\copilotd.ps1 <command> # Windows (PowerShell)
.\copilotd.cmd <command> # Windows (CMD)
No test suite exists yet. Verify changes manually via copilotd status, copilotd session list, and copilotd run --interval 15 --log-level debug.
Architecture
Reconciliation-loop daemon. The core is ReconciliationEngine.Reconcile() which runs every poll cycle with five steps:
- Prune terminal sessions older than 7 days
- Verify tracked processes are alive (PID + start time to detect PID reuse)
- Query GitHub for issues matching rules via
ghCLI - Reconcile desired vs. observed state (terminate unmatched, create/retry matched)
- Dispatch pending sessions up to
MaxInstanceslimit
State converges through this loop — every inconsistency (crashed process, stale session, failed API call) self-heals on the next cycle.
Three truth sources are reconciled each cycle: persisted state (~/.copilotd/state.json) → live OS process status → current GitHub issue matches.
Session lifecycle states: Pending → Dispatching → Running → Completed/Failed/Orphaned, plus WaitingForFeedback (session paused, waiting for new issue comments) and WaitingForReview. Joined is a legacy compatibility state from older versions that used local interactive takeover. CompletedBySession flag distinguishes explicit copilot completion from automatic (issue unmatched) completion.
Key Conventions
PowerShell Safety
PowerShell variable names are case-insensitive, so $home resolves to the built-in read-only $HOME variable. Never use $home as a scratch or target variable name in scripts. Use specific names relative to the context at hand instead, especially before destructive operations like Remove-Item -Recurse.
System.CommandLine v2.0.5 API
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.
- 2d ago First seen · 98 lines · 1,292 tokens per session scan A 65be377aa9ca
copilotd copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository DamianEdwards/copilotd (59 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 1,292 tokens to every session, about $0.0065 per session on Opus 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.
Other instructions, from other repositories
skill-recorder copilot-instructions.md
Instructions for microsoft/skill-recorder, covering repository instructions for coding agents and pull requests target the active release branch, not main.
ai-ready AGENTS.md
Instructions for johnpapa/ai-ready, covering ai-ready repo — agent guide, repository structure, tech stack, build & run and testing.
ai-ready copilot-instructions.md
Instructions for johnpapa/ai-ready, covering copilot instructions — ai-ready, project type, writing conventions, markdown and yaml (skill frontmatter, workflows, issue templates).
DPlex copilot-instructions.md
Instructions for Ron537/DPlex, covering dplex — copilot instructions, build & run, architecture, process boundaries and provider system (ai tool abstraction).
spec-kit-copilot AGENTS.md
Instructions for github/spec-kit-copilot, covering what this repository is, core skills plugin, core decisions (do not silently undo) and when revving the core skills plugin.
oh-my-copilot AGENTS.md
Instructions for RobinNorberg/oh-my-copilot, covering oh-my-copilot - intelligent multi-agent orchestration and setup.