gastownhall/beads is a command-line graph issue tracker that gives coding agents persistent, structured memory through a dependency-aware task database. It is for developers and AI agents handling long-running work across tasks, branches, and sessions. The catalogue entries provide integrations and workflows for operating Beads with coding agents.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to gastownhall/beads. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gastownhall/beads/main/.github/copilot-instructions.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/gastownhall/beadsWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/gastownhall/beads/copilot-instructions)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/gastownhall/beads/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/gastownhall/beads/copilot-instructions/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/gastownhall/beads/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/gastownhall/beads/copilot-instructions.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00185 | $0.00185 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00074 | $0.00074 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00037 | $0.00037 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00018 | $0.00018 |
Grade A, and why
beads 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 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.
What it actually says
GitHub Copilot instructions for beads
The canonical contributor instructions for this repository are in
AGENTS.md; area-specific rules are in the nested AGENTS.md
files listed in its routing table. Read those, not this file, for workflow,
build, test, and scope rules.
The rules most often missed in review:
- A PR must close a documented GitHub issue (filed before or alongside it).
- Build with
make install, nevergo build -o bd ./cmd/bdorgo install ./cmd/bd. make ci-pr-lintmust pass with zero issues; choose tests with engdocs/TESTING.md.- Never create test issues in a production database; use
t.TempDir(). - CLI output uses small Unicode status symbols, never emoji icons.
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.
- 10d ago Changed · -123 lines · -1,073 tokens per session 2c781656fc12
- 1mo ago First seen · 139 lines · 1,258 tokens per session scan A 182267d05863
beads copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository gastownhall/beads (27,917 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 185 tokens to every session, about $0.0007 per session on Opus 5.5. 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.
Other instructions, from other repositories
vscode buildNext.instructions.md
Working notes and architecture documentation for the new esbuild-based build system in build/next. Use when making changes to the new build pipeline (transpile/bundle commands, NLS plugin, source-map handling, resource copying, or self-hosting watch tasks).
next.js AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for vercel/next.js, covering next.js development guide, codebase structure, monorepo overview, core package: packages/next and other important packages.
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.md
Instructions for microsoft/vscode, covering vs code oss third-party-notices pipeline, architecture, pipeline flow in ci, cache eligibility and rollout and applying the notice (cutover).
langchain AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for langchain-ai/langchain, covering global development guidelines for the langchain monorepo, corridor security analysis, project architecture and context, monorepo structure and development tools & commands.
deepseek-harness AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness, covering agents.md, pre-stable apis and released session data, repository layout, commands and host sandbox failures.
vscode copilot-instructions.md
Copilot instructions for microsoft/vscode, covering vs code copilot instructions, project overview, root folders, core architecture (src/ folder) and built-in extensions (extensions/ folder).