Microsoft 365 Agents SDK is a software toolkit for building AI agents that can communicate through channels such as Microsoft 365 Copilot, Teams, web apps, and custom applications. Developers use it to add state, storage, event handling, and channel-specific behavior while choosing their own AI services and models. The catalogue entries are skills and plugins for working with this SDK.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to microsoft/Agents. 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/Agents/main/.github/copilot-instructions.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/AgentsWrote 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/agents/copilot-instructions)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/microsoft/agents/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/agents/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/agents/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/agents/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 | $0.00288 | $0.00288 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00115 | $0.00115 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00058 | $0.00058 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00029 | $0.00029 |
Grade A, and why
Agents 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 today.
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.
What it actually says
Generated Teams samples
Synchronization owns maintenance of generated Teams samples in every language.
The language profiles in automation/teams-sample-sync/config/targets.yml define
the managed destination roots, currently samples/dotnet/teams/** and
samples/nodejs/teams/**. This rule also applies to future language profiles.
Outside that process, do not change any files in those roots, including implementations,
project/package versions, lockfiles, shared helpers such as AspNetExtensions.cs, tests,
manifests, configuration, assets, documentation, formatting, cleanup, or dependency updates.
The authorized maintenance path includes the synchronization runtime and Copilot tasks assigned through workflow-generated handoff issues with prepared patches and migration evidence. Assignment to an arbitrary issue does not grant this exception. Follow the synchronization instructions and validation requirements for the selected samples.
If an ordinary task needs a change or encounters a build failure in these roots, report the problem and identify the synchronization work needed. Reference an existing issue when appropriate; do not automatically open an issue or trigger a workflow.
Review generated samples normally: flag real defects, unauthorized changes, and missing or failing validation. Recommend fixing them through synchronization, including required SDK compatibility migrations, rather than manual generated-output patches.
Automation source and the shared contract harness outside these roots remain maintainable through ordinary tasks. This ownership guidance does not replace CI enforcement.
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.
- today First seen · 26 lines · 288 tokens per session scan A cb397d0388a7
Agents copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/Agents (1,101 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 288 tokens to every session, about $0.0012 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 2026-11-06.
Agents copilot-instructions.md compared with instructions from other repositories
| Mod | Type | Stars | Last push | Licence | Scan | Tokens | Works with |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agents copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/Agents | Instructions file | 1.1k | yesterday | MIT | A | 288 | GitHub Copilot |
| vscode buildNext.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode | Instructions file | 195k | today | MIT | A | 9,719 | GitHub Copilot |
| next.js AGENTS.mdvercel/next.js | Instructions file | 143k | today | MIT | A | 7,461 | Codex, OpenCode |
| vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode | Instructions file | 195k | today | MIT | A | 5,516 | GitHub Copilot |
| langchain AGENTS.mdlangchain-ai/langchain | Instructions file | 149k | today | MIT | A | 4,680 | Codex, OpenCode |
| vscode copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode | Instructions file | 195k | today | MIT | A | 3,093 | GitHub Copilot |
| deepseek-harness AGENTS.mddeepseek-ai/deepseek-harness | Instructions file | 274k | 2d ago | MIT | A | 4,313 | Codex, OpenCode |