cates api.instructions.md

Project instructions for structuring an Express API, a web service that handles requests and returns responses.

In plain words
What is it for?
Adding API endpoints with Zod request validation, repository-based database access, standard errors, and integration tests.
Why use it?
They keep routes, validation, errors, database access, and integration tests in predictable places instead of mixing them together.

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/cates/api
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/cates

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Per session 131 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 131 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 $0.00131 $0.00131
Opus 5 $0.00066 $0.00066
Sonnet 5 $0.00026 $0.00026
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00013

Measured yesterday against content hash 311d3c1af8a8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cates api.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 yesterday.

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.

fixtures/copilot/.github/instructions/api.instructions.md · 12 lines

What it actually says

Express API conventions (src/api/)

  • Define each route in its own file under src/api/routes/; register it in src/api/router.ts.
  • Validate request bodies with the Zod schema in src/api/schemas/, not inline checks.
  • Throw AppError from src/errors.ts; the error middleware maps it to a status code.
  • Reach the database through repositories in src/db/; never import Drizzle clients into a route.
  • Cover each new route with an integration test in tests/api/ using createTestContext().
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. yesterday First seen · 12 lines · 131 tokens per session scan A 311d3c1af8a8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cates api.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/cates (14 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 131 tokens to every session, about $0.0007 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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