Alex_Skill_Mall: Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

.github/instructions/no-deferred-debt.instructions.md

Alex_Skill_Mall no-deferred-debt.instructions.md is an instructions file for GitHub Copilot from fabioc-aloha/Alex_Skill_Mall. It costs 901 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

An instruction to fix technical debt, stale references, dead links, and outdated content as soon as they are found during a task.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps keep filenames, links, documentation, descriptions, counts, and references aligned with the current project.
Why use it?
It prevents known maintenance problems from being recorded as future work and becoming harder to correct later.

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/no-deferred-debt.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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Your own site
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Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

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Per session 901 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 901 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 $0.00901 $0.00901
Opus 5 $0.00451 $0.00451
Sonnet 5 $0.00180 $0.00180
Haiku 4.5 $0.00090 $0.00090

Measured 10d ago against content hash c269e8c56d1b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Alex_Skill_Mall no-deferred-debt.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 10d 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/no-deferred-debt.instructions.md · 57 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 57 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

No Deferred Debt

Always-on rationale: debt surfaces in any context (script run, doc audit, file edit, command output). The "fix in same turn" discipline must fire whenever debt is observed, not only when working on specific file types. A scoped glob would create the failure mode it's designed to prevent.

If a turn surfaces tech debt — stale references, dead links, outdated content, dead-letter prompts, hardcoded names that no longer exist — fix it in the same turn. Do not log it as "non-blocking" or "follow-up workstream." The cheapest moment to fix the debt is the moment it surfaced.

Rule

When any of the following appears in a turn's output:

  • A grep/Select-String surfaces references to artifacts I just deleted
  • A regen reveals stale counts in a manifest
  • A file lookup returns a path that no longer exists
  • A doc enumerates skills/instructions/prompts that are gone
  • A script hardcodes names I just renamed or removed
  • A link in a markdown file points to something that 404s locally
  • A description or applyTo references concepts no longer in the brain

Fix it before declaring the turn done. Do not write "non-blocking, deferred to next pass" unless the debt is genuinely architectural and requires its own decision cycle (in which case open an explicit decision artifact — ADR draft, proposal, or HANDOFF entry naming the specific decision the deferral is waiting on).

"I'll fix it in the next session" is not an acceptable reason. The context is already loaded. The diff is already small. The reviewer is already in the file.

When deferral IS legitimate

Deferral reason Acceptable?
"Not in scope of this turn" No — if I spotted it, it's in scope now
"Needs user decision" Yes — but write the specific question in HANDOFF.md or a proposal, don't just leave the debt
"Requires architectural redesign" Yes — open ADR draft naming the question, don't leave a silent broken state
"Would take more than 10 minutes" Borderline — if it's mechanical, do it; if genuinely complex, name the deferral concretely with timeline
"Documentation update only" No — docs that lie are debt
"Test data" No — test data with dead refs makes tests untrustworthy

Read the full file on GitHub · 57 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. 10d ago First seen · 57 lines · 901 tokens per session scan A c269e8c56d1b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Alex_Skill_Mall no-deferred-debt.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository fabioc-aloha/Alex_Skill_Mall (4 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 901 tokens to every session, about $0.0045 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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