What is ai-developer copilot-instructions.md?

Repository instructions for Microsoft AI Developer hackathon challenges built around Semantic Kernel, a Microsoft framework for creating AI applications. They add a rule to use Azure best-practice guidance for Azure-related work when available.

Use them when navigating that repository or working on its Semantic Kernel challenges, especially tasks involving Azure.

They give coding agents project context and a specific review step for code or commands involving Azure.

How microsoft/ai-developer configures GitHub Copilot

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to microsoft/ai-developer. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/ai-developer/main/ChatUI/.github/copilot-instructions.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/ai-developer

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Wrote 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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/ai-developer/copilot-instructions/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/microsoft/ai-developer/copilot-instructions)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/microsoft/ai-developer/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/ai-developer/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/microsoft/ai-developer/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/ai-developer/copilot-instructions.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 44 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 44 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

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 5.1	$0.00044	$0.00044
Opus 5.5	$0.00018	$0.00018
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00009	$0.00009
Haiku 4.5	$0.00004	$0.00004

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 85be02e4bd18, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ai-developer 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 2mo 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.

ChatUI/.github/copilot-instructions.md · 1 lines

What it actually says

@azure Rule - Use Azure Best Practices: When generating code for Azure, running terminal commands for Azure, or performing operations related to Azure, invoke your get_azure_best_practices tool if available.

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.

2mo ago First seen · 1 lines · 44 tokens per session scan A 85be02e4bd18

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ai-developer copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/ai-developer (130 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 44 tokens to every session, about $0.0002 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.

ai-developer copilot-instructions.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
ai-developer copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/ai-developer	Instructions file	130	6mo ago	MIT	A	44	GitHub Copilot
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vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	yesterday	MIT	A	5,516	GitHub Copilot
vscode copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	yesterday	MIT	A	3,093	GitHub Copilot
deepseek-harness AGENTS.mddeepseek-ai/deepseek-harness	Instructions file	274k	2d ago	MIT	A	4,313	Codex, OpenCode

ai-developer: Instructions file for GitHub Copilot