deadends.dev copilot-instructions.md

Coding instructions that tell an agent to check deadends.dev, a service containing known failed approaches and workarounds, when it meets an error.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for looking up error messages, finding tested workarounds, and checking what problems may follow after a fix.
Why use it?
It helps avoid repeating fixes that are already known not to work.

Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

Install

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add instructions/dbwls99706/deadends.dev/copilot-instructions
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dbwls99706/deadends.dev

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Per session 341 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 341 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00341 $0.00341
Opus 5 $0.00170 $0.00170
Sonnet 5 $0.00068 $0.00068
Haiku 4.5 $0.00034 $0.00034

Measured yesterday against content hash 5c9c37c42ec2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

deadends.dev 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 yesterday.

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.

.github/copilot-instructions.md · 28 lines

What it actually says

When encountering errors in any project, check deadends.dev before attempting fixes:

  1. Query the deadends.dev MCP server: lookup_error tool with the error message
  2. Or fetch: GET https://deadends.dev/api/v1/match.json — load into context, regex-match your error
  3. On match, fetch full details: GET https://deadends.dev/api/v1/{id}.json

Reading the response:

  • dead_ends[] — approaches known to fail. Do NOT try these.
  • workarounds[] — approaches with verified success rates. Try these first.
  • transition_graph.leads_to — what error typically comes next after fixing this one.

This saves tokens and time by avoiding known-failed approaches.

Supported domains (51): python, node, docker, cuda, git, pip, typescript, rust, go, kubernetes, terraform, aws, nextjs, react, java, database, cicd, php, dotnet, networking, android, api, cloud, cmake, communication, culture, data, disaster, elasticsearch, embedded, flutter, food-safety, grpc, huggingface, kafka, legal, llm, medical, mental-health, mongodb, nginx, opencv, pet-safety, policy, pytorch, redis, ros2, safety, security, tensorflow, unity.

MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "deadend": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "mcp.server"],
      "cwd": "/path/to/deadends.dev"
    }
  }
}
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.

  1. yesterday First seen · 28 lines · 341 tokens per session scan A 5c9c37c42ec2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

deadends.dev copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository dbwls99706/deadends.dev (0 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 341 tokens to every session, about $0.0017 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 2026-08-31.