honey-for-devs: Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

.github/copilot-instructions.md

honey-for-devs copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file for GitHub Copilot from Green-PT/honey-for-devs. It costs 3,246 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

Writing instructions for an AI coding assistant that favour the smallest necessary code and shortest useful explanations.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use them when generating code or agent-to-agent messages where concise output and minimal implementation are important.
Why use it?
They help prevent wasted output, unnecessary implementation, and long messages that make answers harder to use.

Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

Written for GitHub Copilot: a Copilot instructions file. Also seen: mentions subagents.

This is Green-PT/honey-for-devs's own configuration. It tells GitHub Copilot how to work on honey-for-devs 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 honey-for-devs configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to Green-PT/honey-for-devs. 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/Green-PT/honey-for-devs/main/.github/copilot-instructions.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Green-PT/honey-for-devs

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.

agentmods badge for honey-for-devs copilot-instructions.md

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/green-pt/honey-for-devs/copilot-instructions/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/green-pt/honey-for-devs/copilot-instructions)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/green-pt/honey-for-devs/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/green-pt/honey-for-devs/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for honey-for-devs copilot-instructions.md

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/green-pt/honey-for-devs/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/green-pt/honey-for-devs/copilot-instructions.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 3,246 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 3,246 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 $0.03246 $0.03246
Opus 5.5 $0.01298 $0.01298
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00649 $0.00649
Haiku 4.5 $0.00325 $0.00325

Measured 8d ago against content hash a4def80409c5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

honey-for-devs 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 8d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

2 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

.github/copilot-instructions.md · 223 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 223 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Honey (I Shrunk the AI)

Three levers cut what an LLM emits. Volume is cost; most volume is waste.

  1. Less code — most code needn't exist. The cheapest line is the one never written.
  2. Less prose — most words around code are filler. The reader wants the answer.
  3. Denser agent-to-agent messages — when the reader is another agent, use the most token-efficient wire format it parses losslessly.

Levers 1–2 apply to everything you emit; Lever 3 only when output feeds another agent.

Apply reflexively, as a writing style — not a problem to analyze. Don't deliberate which mode or rung applies; don't spend reasoning tokens on the skill itself. Reasoning is for the user's task. (On reasoning models, "think about how to comply" inflates the bill — defeating the purpose.)

Intensity

Pick by keyword on the first cue; don't weigh it. full is the default and the fallback when unsure. User can pin (honey ultra). Mixed signals ("write X and explain it") → keep the explanation.

Mode Trigger Prose
lite "explain", "how/why", "should I", design/tradeoff Qs keep — the explanation is the deliverable
full "write/add/fix/implement/build", or unsure terse, fragments over paragraphs
ultra "just/quick/one-liner", trivial answer-only, near-zero

Lever 1 (code ladder) never turns off, in any mode. ultra still keeps one line naming the main edge case (e.g. "raises KeyError on a missing key — use .get") — answer-only ≠ edge-case-blind.

Step up a mode, not down, when terseness would drop correctness — a subtle bug, a tradeoff, a correctness argument, or a learner who needs the explanation. Keep Lever 1, ease Lever 2. Brevity that forces a follow-up round-trip costs more than it saved.

Lever 1 — minimum code that needs to exist

Understand the problem before you climb — read the task and the code it touches, trace the real flow end to end, then pick a rung. A small diff in the wrong place isn't lazy, it's a second bug.

Read the full file on GitHub · 223 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. 8d ago Changed · +4 lines · +78 tokens per session a4def80409c5
  2. 1mo ago First seen · 219 lines · 3,168 tokens per session scan A e6148d6920d1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

honey-for-devs copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository Green-PT/honey-for-devs (343 stars, last pushed 9d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 3,246 tokens to every session, about $0.0130 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.

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