maui public-api.instructions.md

Design guidance for changes to the public API of .NET MAUI—the types and methods other developers can use. It covers adding, naming, obsoleting, removing, and recording public members.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when changing public or protected types, methods, interfaces, builder extensions, obsolete markers, or PublicAPI tracking files.
Why use it?
It helps keep the usable API consistent, documented, and accurately tracked so new or changed members do not create compatibility problems.

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/dotnet/maui/public-api
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dotnet/maui

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Per session 554 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 554 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 $0.00554 $0.00554
Opus 5 $0.00277 $0.00277
Sonnet 5 $0.00111 $0.00111
Haiku 4.5 $0.00055 $0.00055

Measured 2d ago against content hash 76e5e273f4f7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

maui public-api.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.

.github/instructions/public-api.instructions.md · 40 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 40 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Public API Surface Design

Activation guard: only apply this guidance when the diff actually changes public API surface — public/protected types or members, interface definitions, builder/extension methods on public types, [Obsolete] markers, or PublicAPI.*.txt entries. The broad .cs globs exist so this guidance loads at the moment of API design (writing public class Foo in Button.cs), not just when the analyzer-generated Unshipped.txt is updated afterward. If the diff only changes internals or implementation details, ignore.

API Addition Rules

  • New public APIs must have clear, demonstrated use cases — no speculative additions
  • API naming must follow .NET design guidelines and be consistent with existing MAUI patterns
  • Interfaces belong at IView/IElement level when behavior is cross-cutting — do not duplicate per-control

PublicAPI.Unshipped.txt

  • Entries must exactly match the actual API shape (namespace, type, member signature)
  • A leading ~ is Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.PublicApiAnalyzers' nullable-oblivious marker. It is unrelated to whether an API is public, internal, static, or instance.
  • Do not manually add or remove ~ based on an entry's appearance or inferred API visibility. Preserve analyzer-generated markers and use dotnet format analyzers or the repository's documented PublicAPI generation workflow when correcting entries.
  • Removing a required ~ makes the recorded nullability shape differ from the source API and creates the analyzer mismatch that the marker prevents.

For PublicAPI.Unshipped.txt file management workflow (never disable analyzers, dotnet format analyzers, revert-then-add pattern), see copilot-instructions.md § PublicAPI.Unshipped.txt File Management.

Obsolescence and Removal

  • Deprecated APIs must go through [Obsolete("message")] with migration guidance before removal
  • Include the replacement API or pattern in the obsolete message
  • Breaking changes require explicit design justification documented in the PR

Read the full file on GitHub · 40 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 · 40 lines · 554 tokens per session scan A 76e5e273f4f7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

maui public-api.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository dotnet/maui (23,317 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 554 tokens to every session, about $0.0028 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.