Agent Governance Toolkit is a framework for controlling autonomous AI agents through policy enforcement, identity tracking, execution sandboxing, and reliability practices. Teams use it to decide which agent actions are allowed, identify agents in multi-agent systems, and keep records of decisions. The catalogue entries provide its instructions, commands, plugin, MCP server, and skill.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit. 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/microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit/main/.github/copilot-instructions.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/agent-governance-toolkitWrote 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/microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit/copilot-instructions)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit/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/microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit/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 | $0.05965 | $0.05965 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.02386 | $0.02386 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.01193 | $0.01193 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00596 | $0.00596 |
Grade A, and why
agent-governance-toolkit 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 1mo 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 409 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Copilot Instructions for agent-governance-toolkit
Architecture
Multi-language monorepo for runtime governance of AI agents. Core is Python, with SDKs in TypeScript, Rust, .NET, and Go.
Core Python packages live under packages/:
| Package | Purpose |
|---|---|
agent-compliance (agent_governance_toolkit) |
Unified installer, agt CLI, runtime policy enforcement |
agent-os (agent_os_kernel) |
Kernel: policy evaluator, identity, trust, audit |
agent-mesh (agentmesh_platform) |
Multi-agent networking: Wire Protocol, registry, relay, E2E encryption |
agent-hypervisor |
Execution sandboxing and resource isolation |
agent-sre |
SRE: health checks, circuit breakers, observability |
agent-runtime |
Runtime orchestration layer |
agent-mcp-governance |
MCP (Model Context Protocol) governance primitives |
agent-discovery |
Agent discovery and capability advertisement |
agent-lightning |
Lightweight/fast-path policy evaluation |
agent-marketplace |
Agent marketplace and registry |
agentmesh-integrations |
Framework adapters (LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen, etc.) |
Language SDKs:
| Language | Path | Package name |
|---|---|---|
| TypeScript | packages/agent-mesh/sdks/typescript/ |
@microsoft/agent-governance-sdk |
| Rust | packages/agent-mesh/sdks/rust/ |
agent-governance, agent-governance-mcp |
| .NET | agent-governance-dotnet/ |
Microsoft.AgentGovernance |
| Go | agent-governance-golang/ |
(standalone top-level) |
Other top-level directories: docs/ (MkDocs site), examples/ (runnable integrations), demo/ (live dashboards), pipelines/ (ESRP release automation), benchmarks/, fuzz/ (ClusterFuzzLite), notebooks/.
Each subdirectory with an AGENTS.md has area-specific commands and boundaries: read it before changing code there.
Build, Test, and Lint
Python
# Install (editable, all extras)
pip install -e ".[full]"
# Lint
ruff check --select E,F,W --ignore E501
# Test (full suite)
pytest
# Test (single file)
pytest tests/test_policy.py
# Test (single test by name)
pytest -k "test_policy_deny_dangerous_tools"
# Build
python -m build
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.
- 1mo ago Changed · +1 lines · +132 tokens per session 7afcb36c1896
- 1mo ago First seen · 408 lines · 5,833 tokens per session scan A d051c986f5a4
agent-governance-toolkit copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit (6,477 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 5,965 tokens to every session, about $0.0239 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.