What is dev-starter-kit copilot-instructions.md?

A set of GitHub Copilot instructions for a Python 3.11+ project. It describes the project's coding style, file layout, testing practices, and commit-message format.

Use it when generating Python code, tests, documentation, or commit messages for this project.

It gives Copilot consistent project-specific guidance, so generated code follows the repository's conventions instead of requiring repeated corrections.

dev-starter-kit copilot-instructions.md — Instructions file by humzakt

Install

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.

agentmods

npx agentmods add instructions/humzakt/dev-starter-kit/copilot-instructions

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/humzakt/dev-starter-kit

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Per session 299 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 299 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5	$0.00299	$0.00299
Opus 5	$0.00150	$0.00150
Sonnet 5	$0.00060	$0.00060
Haiku 4.5	$0.00030	$0.00030

Measured 2d ago against content hash 017c3e00ce8c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

dev-starter-kit 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 2d 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/copilot-instructions.md · 42 lines

What it actually says

GitHub Copilot Instructions

Project Context

This is a Python 3.11+ project using Ruff for linting/formatting and pytest for testing.

Code Generation Rules

Always include type hints on function signatures
Use Google-style docstrings for public functions and classes
Use double quotes for strings
Maximum line length: 120 characters
Sort imports using isort conventions (stdlib, third-party, local)
Prefer pathlib.Path over os.path
Use f-strings for string formatting
Catch specific exceptions, never bare except:

Testing

Generate test files in tests/ with pattern test_<module>.py
Use Test<ModuleName> for test classes, test_<func> for methods
Mock external dependencies (APIs, databases, file I/O)
Include edge cases: empty inputs, None values, boundary conditions
Use pytest fixtures for shared setup

Commit Messages

Follow Conventional Commits:

feat: new feature
fix: bug fix
chore: maintenance
docs: documentation
test: adding/updating tests
refactor: restructuring without behavior change

Project Structure

src/ — application source code
tests/ — test files
docs/ — documentation
pyproject.toml — Ruff and pytest configuration

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.

2d ago First seen · 42 lines · 299 tokens per session scan A 017c3e00ce8c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

dev-starter-kit copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository humzakt/dev-starter-kit (3 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 299 tokens to every session, about $0.0015 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.

Git and workflow Testing Writing and docs

spec-kit AGENTS.md

AGENTS.md instructions for github/spec-kit, covering agents.md, about spec kit and specify, quickstart — add a new integration in 5 steps, integration architecture and integrationmanifest — file tracking.

github/spec-kit · 7,104 tokens

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).

microsoft/vscode · 6,785 tokens

dev-starter-kit copilot-instructions.md