Alex_Skill_Mall: Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

.github/instructions/falsifiability-deadlines.instructions.md

Alex_Skill_Mall falsifiability-deadlines.instructions.md is an instructions file for GitHub Copilot from fabioc-aloha/Alex_Skill_Mall. It costs 1,167 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

A rule requiring every new or edited instruction, skill, prompt, or agent definition to include a specific date, event, or time-bounded count for deciding whether it should be discarded.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when creating or editing agent guidance, especially when defining when that guidance should be retired.
Why use it?
It prevents unused or ineffective guidance from remaining active indefinitely without being evaluated.

Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

Written for GitHub Copilot: a Copilot instructions file.

This is fabioc-aloha/Alex_Skill_Mall's own configuration. It tells GitHub Copilot how to work on Alex_Skill_Mall itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything Alex_Skill_Mall configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to fabioc-aloha/Alex_Skill_Mall. 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/fabioc-aloha/Alex_Skill_Mall/main/.github/instructions/falsifiability-deadlines.instructions.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/fabioc-aloha/Alex_Skill_Mall

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.

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README.md
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Per session 1,167 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 1,167 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.01167 $0.01167
Opus 5 $0.00583 $0.00583
Sonnet 5 $0.00233 $0.00233
Haiku 4.5 $0.00117 $0.00117

Measured 9d ago against content hash 20042ce89f67, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Alex_Skill_Mall falsifiability-deadlines.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 9d 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/falsifiability-deadlines.instructions.md · 81 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 81 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Falsifiability deadlines

Every brain artefact must commit to a specific falsification deadline at creation time, not "after N passes" or "when conditions warrant." Vague kill-criteria let an artefact's falsification be indefinitely deferred while the artefact accumulates token cost and authority in the brain.

The rule

Every artefact's ## Falsifiability or ## Would Revise If section must include at least one of:

  1. Date-based deadline: "If not met by , sunset this artefact."
  2. Event-based trigger: "If occurs without the artefact firing as designed, sunset this artefact."
  3. Count-based with time bound: "If after N AND by , hasn't held, sunset this artefact." (N-only is not sufficient.)

The deadline must be specific enough that "did it happen?" is answerable by a third party reading the brain six months later.

What this prevents

Failure mode Without deadline With deadline
Skill never invoked, no one notices Accumulates in brain indefinitely At deadline, gets evaluated; if unused, sunsets
Skill invoked but never produces signal No clock running Deadline forces explicit "did it produce signal?" check
Author hopes future evidence will materialise Hope continues indefinitely Hope expires on date D
Reader can't tell if artefact is alive or stalled No sunset clock Sunset triggers on a known schedule

What this doesn't require

  • Aggressive deadlines. "60 days from creation" is fine if that's a realistic test window. The point is commitment, not haste.
  • Single-point falsification. An artefact can have multiple falsification paths (date + event, or multiple events).
  • Retroactive application to all existing artefacts. Files created before 2026-05-24 are unaffected until separately swept. The bulk sweep is a follow-up to this proposal.

Template

Add to the artefact's ## Falsifiability (skills) or ## Would Revise If (instructions) section:

Read the full file on GitHub · 81 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. 9d ago First seen · 81 lines · 1,167 tokens per session scan A 20042ce89f67

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Alex_Skill_Mall falsifiability-deadlines.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository fabioc-aloha/Alex_Skill_Mall (4 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 1,167 tokens to every session, about $0.0058 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.

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