What is apm copilot-instructions.md?

A set of project rules for the microsoft/apm codebase, including checks for Python style, YAML file handling, file size, duplicated code, and authentication-related signals.

Use it when changing apm code or preparing pull requests, release notes, or audit reports. It provides commands for running the project's checks locally and guidance on keeping changes compatible with the main branch.

It helps developers catch the same issues that continuous integration (automated checks run for proposed changes) will reject, before pushing code. It also explains local workflow details and common surprises.

How microsoft/apm configures GitHub Copilot

About the project

APM is a package manager for AI-agent configuration, using a manifest to declare reusable instructions, skills, prompts, agents, hooks, plugins, and MCP components. Development teams use it to reproduce agent setups across projects and control their dependencies through policies and lockfiles, while the catalogue contains many of these agent components.

microsoft/apm · 4,133 stars · on GitHub · microsoft.github.io

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to microsoft/apm. 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/apm/main/.github/copilot-instructions.md

Clone the repo

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

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/apm/copilot-instructions/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/microsoft/apm/copilot-instructions)

Your own site

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

Per session 827 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 827 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	$0.00827	$0.00827
Opus 5.5	$0.00331	$0.00331
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00165	$0.00165
Haiku 4.5	$0.00083	$0.00083

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 028904d8ec8d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

apm 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

apm linting.instructions.md — 94% identical, 25 lines differ

.github/copilot-instructions.md · 69 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 69 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Linting (canonical contract)

The CI Lint job is a hard gate. Mirror it locally before git push and before producing any artifact (PR body, release note, audit report) that claims CI is green.

CI-mirror commands

The Lint job runs (see .github/workflows/ci.yml):

uv run --extra dev ruff check src/ tests/
uv run --extra dev ruff format --check src/ tests/
YAML I/O safety guard (rejects raw yaml.dump(..., handle) outside utils/yaml_io.py; mark approved exceptions with # yaml-io-exempt).
File length guardrail (no src/**/*.py may exceed 2450 lines).
No raw str(path.relative_to(...)) patterns -- use portable_relpath() from apm_cli.utils.paths.
Code duplication guardrail (pylint R0801): uv run --extra dev python -m pylint --disable=all --enable=R0801 \ --min-similarity-lines=10 --fail-on=R0801 src/apm_cli/
Auth-protocol boundary check: bash scripts/lint-auth-signals.sh

All seven must succeed. CI evaluates these on the PR merge commit (HEAD merged with current main), so duplication introduced by a recent main commit can fail your PR even if your own diff is clean. Always merge main locally before running the mirror.

Local workflow

Auto-fix style+imports: uv run --extra dev ruff check src/ tests/ --fix
Apply formatter: uv run --extra dev ruff format src/ tests/

Verify the full Lint job (must all be silent / exit 0):

uv run --extra dev ruff check src/ tests/ \
  && uv run --extra dev ruff format --check src/ tests/ \
  && uv run --extra dev python -m pylint --disable=all --enable=R0801 \
     --min-similarity-lines=10 --fail-on=R0801 src/apm_cli/ \
  && bash scripts/lint-auth-signals.sh

(The YAML, file-length, and relative_to guards are pure-grep one-liners from ci.yml; run them directly if you have touched those surfaces.)

Always run the verify chain before git push -- the CI Lint job fails on any remaining diagnostic.

Read the full file on GitHub · 69 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.

1mo ago First seen · 69 lines · 827 tokens per session scan A 028904d8ec8d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

apm copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/apm (4,133 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 827 tokens to every session, about $0.0033 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.

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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).

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apm: Instructions file for GitHub Copilot