GitHub Agentic Workflows is a GitHub CLI extension that lets developers define AI-assisted repository automation in Markdown and run it through GitHub Actions. It is intended for tasks requiring interpretation or reasoning, such as issue triage, pull-request review, CI investigation, documentation maintenance, and dependency analysis. The catalogue entries provide skills and agents for working with these workflows.
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.
npx agentmods add instructions/github/gh-aw/agents-mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/github/gh-awWrote 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/gh-aw/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/github/gh-aw/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/github/gh-aw/agents-md.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" 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 | $0.01954 | $0.01954 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00977 | $0.00977 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00391 | $0.00391 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00195 | $0.00195 |
Grade A, and why
gh-aw AGENTS.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 yesterday.
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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 149 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
GitHub Agentic Workflows (gh-aw)
GitHub Agentic Workflows (gh-aw) is a GitHub CLI extension that compiles markdown workflows into GitHub Actions.
Important Note: gh-aw vs GitHub Copilot CLI
- gh-aw is the
gh awCLI extension. - copilot is a separate CLI used as one possible runtime engine.
- Use
gh awcommands for workflow authoring/compilation (gh aw compile,gh aw run,gh aw audit).
Ambient Context (First Invocation)
To keep first-turn context small, only these repository root instruction files should be considered ambient:
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
AGENTS.md |
Minimal global operating rules and routing |
SKILL.md |
Short repository capability summary |
Everything else should be loaded lazily through skills only when needed.
Critical Rules (Always Applicable)
- If you changed files, use
report_progressto commit and push. - Before intermediate
report_progresscalls, runmake agent-report-progress-no-test(fast, no tests). Before the finalreport_progress, runmake agent-report-progress(includestest-unit).test-unitis impacted-first by default (~30s target). UseTEST_UNIT_RUN_FULL=1 make test-unitormake test-unit-allwhen full-suite coverage is required.- Run
test-unitonly once per PR — at the final push, not on every intermediate save.
- After Go changes, run
make fmt. - After workflow markdown changes (
.mdunder.github/workflows/), runmake recompile. - Do not add
.lock.ymlfiles to.gitignore. - Never attempt to trigger a workflow run (e.g.,
gh run,gh aw run) as part of a Copilot cloud agent run. The token does not have the required access. Always fail with an error — do not task the user or ask them to run it manually. - Large-file guard: before reading any file with
github-mcp-server-get_file_contents, check its size. Files larger than 20 KB must be read with targeted tools (grep,glob,bash, orviewwithview_range) instead of full-file reads. See token-optimization.md for the full technique. - Never ask the user to confirm the plan. Always execute the plan.
- Autopilot mode: Never ask for confirmation before taking action. Never prompt the user with "Should I proceed?", "Do you want me to…?", or any equivalent. Always act immediately and autonomously.
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.
- yesterday First seen · 149 lines · 1,954 tokens per session scan A 040a1f00a853
gh-aw AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository github/gh-aw (5,104 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 1,954 tokens to every session, about $0.0098 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 2026-09-03.
Other instructions, from other repositories
run-gemini-cli GEMINI.md
Instructions for google-github-actions/run-gemini-cli, covering guidelines for developing this github action, core principles for this action and your role in development.
dev_agent
Expert engineer for this GitHub Action.
gh-watch CLAUDE.md
Claude Code instructions for justincampbell/gh-watch, covering gh-watch, architecture, key design decisions, development and testing.
opencoverage copilot-instructions.md
Instructions for arxdsilva/opencoverage, covering copilot instructions for coverage-api, mission, core architecture: hexagonal (ports and adapters), required layers and go language standards.
scaffold AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for AlexSkrypnyk/scaffold, covering agents.md, project overview, php application architecture, symfony console application and adding new commands.
scaffold CLAUDE.md
Claude Code instructions for AlexSkrypnyk/scaffold, a project described as: 🪜 Generic project scaffold template.