a2acast copilot-instructions.md

Repository instructions for a small Python program that connects coding agents across machines. They define compatibility, testing, security-related rules, and the requirement to keep the main file free of third-party packages.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use them when modifying the mesh program, its command-line integrations, or its tests.
Why use it?
They tell an agent about constraints that could otherwise cause failed tests or unsafe claims, especially for changes involving identity, cryptography, certificates, or message formats.

Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

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/husker/a2acast/copilot-instructions
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/husker/a2acast

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Per session 645 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 645 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00645 $0.00645
Opus 5 $0.00322 $0.00322
Sonnet 5 $0.00129 $0.00129
Haiku 4.5 $0.00064 $0.00064

Measured 2d ago against content hash 61fc14ce8228, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

a2acast 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 · 48 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 48 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

a2acast — Copilot instructions

Cross-machine agent-to-agent mesh. One stdlib-only Python file (mesh.py) plus harness integrations for Claude Code, Codex CLI, and Copilot CLI. Tests in tests/test_mesh.py.

Full rationale for every rule below is in AGENTS.md. The rules themselves are repeated here because an instruction you have to go fetch is an instruction that does not get followed.

Hard constraints

  • mesh.py is stdlib-only. No third-party imports. CI catches this (stdlib_only job, #140) and the local suite does too (StdlibOnlyTests); a third-party import fails before push. Stay vigilant — the test catches imports, not subtle misuse of a stdlib facility.
  • Python 3.8+. No match, no runtime X | Y unions, no 3.9+ stdlib.
  • Tests: python3 -m unittest discover -s tests (python on Windows)

Security-relevant changes

Crypto, identity, pins, certs, revocation, verdicts, wire format, or anything on a #62 / #74 / #76 / #93 line.

  1. Never claim a property you have not tested. The PR body is a hypothesis. Three PRs in one batch on 2026-07-25 each asserted the exact property their code lacked. Write what the code does; if a guard is partial, name the case it misses.
  2. Ship a test that FAILS without the fix, not one that passes with it.
  3. A guard must be load-bearing both ways. Revert the fix → attack test fails. Disable the mechanism → legitimate-use test fails.
  4. Gate on the property, not a proxy. "Sender has a list" ≠ "fleet can parse this." "Name is unpinned" ≠ "name is unclaimed."
  5. Mixed versions are normal. New signed fields partition older peers. Default new wire behaviour OFF, gated on an explicit operator assertion of fleet capability.
  6. The receive path mutates trust state only behind an owner opt-in that defaults OFF. A received frame may write identity records only via an explicit opt-in that defaults off (#137 resolved A; #93's rename_migration) — never the default, never the same PR.
  7. Design-first for signed-frame-body changes, before implementing.

Read the full file on GitHub · 48 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. 2d ago First seen · 48 lines · 645 tokens per session scan A 61fc14ce8228

Subscribe to this mod's changes

a2acast copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository husker/a2acast (7 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 645 tokens to every session, about $0.0032 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.