Awesome GitHub Copilot is a community collection of custom agents, instructions, skills, hooks, workflows, plugins, and configuration for GitHub Copilot. It helps Copilot users customize coding and development tasks. Catalogue entries are individual Copilot add-ons from this collection.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to github/awesome-copilot. 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/github/awesome-copilot/main/.github/copilot-instructions.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/github/awesome-copilotWrote 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/github/awesome-copilot/copilot-instructions)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/github/awesome-copilot/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/github/awesome-copilot/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/github/awesome-copilot/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/github/awesome-copilot/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 | $0.01126 | $0.01126 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00450 | $0.00450 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00225 | $0.00225 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00113 | $0.00113 |
Grade A, and why
awesome-copilot 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 today.
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.
Copies of this mod
1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:
- awesome-copilot copilot-instructions.md — 95% identical, 26 lines differ
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 90 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
The following instructions are only to be applied when performing a code review.
Use .github/skills/code-review/SKILL.md for repository-fit, differentiation,
provenance, validation, and editorial-quality review criteria. Apply the
deterministic file-format checks below as well.
Frontmatter must be valid YAML and satisfy the required fields, types, lengths, and naming rules. Accept any valid YAML scalar style (plain, single-quoted, double-quoted, literal, or folded); do not flag a value solely because it is not single-quoted.
README updates
- The new file should be added to the
docs/README.<type>.md.
Prompt file guide
Only apply to files that end in .prompt.md
- The prompt has markdown front matter.
- The prompt has a
agentfield specified of eitheragent,ask, orPlan. - The prompt has a
descriptionfield. - The
descriptionfield is not empty. - The file name is lower case, with words separated by hyphens.
- Encourage the use of
tools, but it's not required. - Strongly encourage the use of
modelto specify the model that the prompt is optimised for. - Strongly encourage the use of
nameto set the name for the prompt.
Instruction file guide
Only apply to files that end in .instructions.md
- The instruction has markdown front matter.
- The instruction has a
descriptionfield. - The
descriptionfield is not empty. - The file name is lower case, with words separated by hyphens.
- The instruction has an
applyTofield that specifies the file or files to which the instructions apply. If they wish to specify multiple file paths they should formatted like'**.js, **.ts'.
Agent file guide
Only apply to files that end in .agent.md
- The agent has markdown front matter.
- The agent has a
descriptionfield. - The
descriptionfield is not empty. - The file name is lower case, with words separated by hyphens.
- Encourage the use of
tools, but it's not required. - Strongly encourage the use of
modelto specify the model that the agent is optimised for. - Strongly encourage the use of
nameto set the name for the agent.
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.
- today Changed · +14 lines · +254 tokens per session dff66f209ece
- 1mo ago Changed · +4 lines · +43 tokens per session aaa9a197008c
- 1mo ago First seen · 72 lines · 829 tokens per session scan A 03dd04a408bf
awesome-copilot copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository github/awesome-copilot (40,401 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 1,126 tokens to every session, about $0.0045 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.
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).
deno copilot-instructions.md
Copilot instructions for denoland/deno, covering deno development guide for github copilot, network access, high level overview, key directories and key files to understand first.