Agent365-devTools copilot-instructions.md

A coding guide for Microsoft Agent 365 DevTools, a .NET command-line program for deploying and managing Agent 365 applications on Azure. It sets rules for organising code, handling errors, keeping changes focused, and supporting different operating systems.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when adding or reviewing CLI commands, organising C# files, defining models or errors, and checking cross-platform compatibility.
Why use it?
It helps an agent follow the repository’s engineering conventions instead of introducing duplicate code, misplaced constants, or inconsistent error handling.

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/microsoft/agent365-devtools/copilot-instructions
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/Agent365-devTools

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Per session 3,398 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 3,398 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 $0.03398 $0.03398
Opus 5 $0.01699 $0.01699
Sonnet 5 $0.00680 $0.00680
Haiku 4.5 $0.00340 $0.00340

Measured 2d ago against content hash 15517903e5bc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Agent365-devTools 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 · 291 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 291 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

GitHub Copilot Instructions for Agent365-devTools

Agent365 CLI Development Guidelines

Engineering Principles

  • Follow KISS, DRY, SOLID, and YAGNI principles
  • Align CLI patterns with Azure CLI (az) conventions
  • Keep changes minimal and focused on the problem at hand
  • Reuse existing functions across commands; avoid duplication
  • Critically review all changes before committing

Code Organization

  • Keep files small and focused
  • Use constants for strings and values (see Constants/ folder)
  • Use ErrorCodes.cs and ErrorMessages.cs for error handling

File Organization Guidelines

Multiple Classes Per File - Allowed Cases
  • Model/DTO files: Related model classes, records, or structs can be grouped in a single file
  • Request/Response pairs: API request and response classes for the same endpoint
  • Small supporting types: Enums, small records, or helper classes closely tied to a main class
  • Nested or related interfaces: Interface and its related types
When to Separate
  • Large classes with significant logic
  • Classes that could be reused independently
  • Classes with different lifecycle or ownership

Cross-Platform Compatibility

  • All code must work on Windows, macOS, and Linux
  • Test file paths, line endings, and shell commands for compatibility

Testing Standards

  • Use xUnit, FluentAssertions, and NSubstitute
  • Focus on quality over quantity of tests
  • Add regression tests for bug fixes
  • Tests should verify CLI reliability
  • Tests must assert requirements, not implementation — when a test is changed to match new code behavior (rather than to reflect a changed requirement), that is a red flag. A test that silently tracks whatever the code does provides no regression protection. If a test needs to be updated, explicitly document the requirement the new assertion encodes (use because: in FluentAssertions). If you cannot articulate a requirement reason, the test change should be questioned.
  • FluentAssertions because: is mandatory for non-obvious assertions — any assertion on a URL structure, encoding format, security-sensitive behavior, or protocol requirement must include a because: clause explaining the invariant being enforced.
  • Dispose IDisposable objects properly:
    • HttpResponseMessage objects created in tests must be disposed
    • Even in mock/test handlers, follow proper disposal patterns
    • Consider using using statements or ensure test handlers dispose responses
    • This applies to all IDisposable test objects to avoid analyzer warnings
  • Disable parallel execution for tests with shared state:
    • Tests that modify environment variables must disable parallelization
    • Tests that access shared file system resources must run sequentially
    • Use [CollectionDefinition("TestName", DisableParallelization = true)] pattern
    • Add [Collection("TestName")] attribute to test class
    • Pattern to follow:
      /// <summary>
      /// Tests must run sequentially because they modify environment variables.
      /// </summary>
      [CollectionDefinition("EnvTests", DisableParallelization = true)]
      public class EnvTestCollection { }
      
      [Collection("EnvTests")]
      public class MyTests
      {
          [Fact]
          public void Test_ModifiesEnvironmentVariable()
          {
              Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("VAR", "value");
              try
              {
                  // Test logic
              }
              finally
              {
                  Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("VAR", null);
              }
          }
      }
      

Read the full file on GitHub · 291 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 · 291 lines · 3,398 tokens per session scan A 15517903e5bc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Agent365-devTools copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/Agent365-devTools (61 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 3,398 tokens to every session, about $0.0170 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 2026-08-30.

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