intelligent-terminal copilot-instructions.md

Build and development instructions for Windows Terminal and Windows Console Host, large C++ projects that run on Windows. It explains the required Visual Studio setup, build commands, tests, and formatting rules.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when building, testing, formatting, or changing Windows Terminal and its shared console components.
Why use it?
It helps coding agents prepare the correct Windows build environment and avoid common problems with MSBuild, SDKs, or project-specific commands.

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/intelligent-terminal/copilot-instructions
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/intelligent-terminal

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Per session 1,953 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 1,953 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 $0.01953 $0.01953
Opus 5 $0.00977 $0.00977
Sonnet 5 $0.00391 $0.00391
Haiku 4.5 $0.00195 $0.00195

Measured 3d ago against content hash e0cbd2b3718a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

intelligent-terminal 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 3d 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 · 134 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 134 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Copilot Instructions for Windows Terminal

This is the source repository for Windows Terminal, Windows Console Host (conhost.exe), and shared components between them. It is a large C++ codebase built with MSBuild/Visual Studio targeting Windows.

Build

Requires Visual Studio (preferably Visual Studio 2026) with "Desktop Development with C++" and "Universal Windows Platform Development" workloads, plus the Windows 11 SDK (10.0.22621.0). The solution uses the .slnx format (OpenConsole.slnx), which requires MSBuild 17.10 or later. If you get "Invalid input 'OpenConsole.slnx'. The file type was not recognized.", update Visual Studio.

Build uses MSBuild via the CMD razzle environment. Run razzle.cmd once per terminal session to set up the environment, then use the build commands. Since razzle sets env vars in CMD, chain commands with && when calling from PowerShell (e.g., cmd /c ".\tools\razzle.cmd && bz"):

.\tools\razzle.cmd            & rem One-time setup per session: finds MSBuild, sets PATH and env vars
bcz                           & rem Clean build the full solution (Debug by default)
bcz rel                       & rem Clean build in Release
bz                            & rem Incremental build (no clean) — much faster for iterating
bz rel                        & rem Incremental Release build

To build only the project in the current directory (instead of the full solution), cd into a project folder and use the exclusive variants:

cd src\cascadia\TerminalApp
bx                            & rem Incremental build of just this project
bcx                           & rem Clean + build of just this project

Three configurations exist: Debug, Release, and AuditMode (enables extra static analysis via CppCoreCheck).

Running

OpenConsole (console host): From a razzle environment, run opencon to launch OpenConsole.exe from the build output.

Windows Terminal: You cannot launch WindowsTerminal.exe directly — it is a packaged app. The easiest way is F5 in Visual Studio with CascadiaPackage as the startup project (set Debug > Application/Background process to "Native Only"). From the command line in a razzle environment:

Read the full file on GitHub · 134 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. 3d ago First seen · 134 lines · 1,953 tokens per session scan A e0cbd2b3718a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

intelligent-terminal copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/intelligent-terminal (1,908 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 1,953 tokens to every session, about $0.0098 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.