PixelPilot reasoning.instructions.md

A planning guide that makes an agent clarify requirements, consider alternatives, choose an approach, and review it before writing code or creating an artefact.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for non-trivial or ambiguous coding tasks that need structured planning before implementation.
Why use it?
It reduces premature implementation and helps expose missing requirements, trade-offs, and risks in architecture, feature, refactoring, or security 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/dev-lou/pixelpilot/reasoning
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dev-lou/PixelPilot

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Per session 2,073 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 2,073 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 $0.02073 $0.02073
Opus 5 $0.01037 $0.01037
Sonnet 5 $0.00415 $0.00415
Haiku 4.5 $0.00207 $0.00207

Measured 2d ago against content hash 999a3b33de3f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

PixelPilot reasoning.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.

vscode/.github/instructions/reasoning.instructions.md · 263 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 263 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Reasoning — Meta-Skill 2026

Structured thinking protocol: restate → constrain → diverge → evaluate → propose → review. Never write a line of code until all six steps are complete.


WHY THIS EXISTS

AI models are pattern-matchers. Without a forcing function they will:

  • Jump to the most common solution (which may be wrong for this context)
  • Miss implicit constraints (auth model, existing tech debt, team conventions)
  • Generate confident but incorrect code in unfamiliar domains
  • Fail to surface the ambiguity that a human expert would immediately flag

This skill installs that forcing function.


THE SIX-STEP REASONING WORKFLOW

Run every step in order. Do not skip. Do not merge steps.


STEP 1 — RESTATE THE GOAL

Paraphrase the request in your own words. Be specific. Include:

  • What the user wants to achieve (outcome, not activity)
  • Who is the end user or beneficiary
  • What success looks like (measurable if possible)
  • What is explicitly out of scope (if stated)
Example restatement:
"The user wants a multi-step checkout form for an e-commerce site (Premium Modern
design language). Success = user can complete purchase in < 90 s on mobile.
Out of scope: payment processing logic — only the UI layer."

If the restatement changes what the user seemed to ask for, stop and confirm before continuing.


STEP 2 — LIST ALL CONSTRAINTS

Enumerate every constraint, grouped by category. Ask clarifying questions for anything marked [?].

## Constraints

### Technical
- Framework: Next.js 14 App Router [confirmed / ?]
- Styling: Tailwind v4 + CSS custom properties [confirmed / ?]
- Browser support: modern evergreen + Safari 16+ [?]
- Must work without JS? (progressive enhancement) [?]

### Design System
- Design language: Premium Modern [confirmed / ?]
- Tokens already defined in tokens.css? [confirmed / ?]
- Dark mode required? [confirmed — law #6]

### Business / Product
- Must ship by: [?]
- Analytics / tracking requirements? [?]
- Legal / compliance (GDPR, WCAG, HIPAA)? [?]

### Team
- Will other devs maintain this? Skill level? [?]
- Existing component library to reuse? [?]
- PR / code review process affects scope? [?]

Read the full file on GitHub · 263 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.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 263 lines · 2,073 tokens per session scan A 999a3b33de3f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

PixelPilot reasoning.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository dev-lou/PixelPilot (2 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 2,073 tokens to every session, about $0.0104 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.