Visual Studio Code is a code editor that supports editing, navigating, understanding, debugging, and extending software projects. Developers use it for the edit-build-debug cycle, and the catalogue add-ons provide skills, instructions, and agents for working within the editor.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to microsoft/vscode. 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/vscode/main/.github/instructions/chat.instructions.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/vscodeWrote 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/vscode/chat)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/microsoft/vscode/chat"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/vscode/chat/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/vscode/chat"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/vscode/chat.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 | $0.00370 | $0.00370 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00148 | $0.00148 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00074 | $0.00074 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00037 | $0.00037 |
Grade A, and why
vscode chat.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.
What it actually says
Adding chat/AI-related features
- When adding a new chat/AI feature like a new surface where chat or agents appear, a new AI command, etc, these features must not show up for users when they've disabled AI features. The best way to do this is to gate the feature on the context key
ChatContextKeys.enabledvia a when clause. - When doing a code review for code that adds an AI feature, please ensure that the feature is properly gated.
Hiding AI Features When Disabled
When surfacing a UI AI feature, ensure the feature hides when chat.disableAIFeatures is set:
- UI Hiding: Use
ChatContextKeys.enabledinwhenconditions to conditionally show/hide UI elements (commands, views, menu items, etc.)- Example:
when: ChatContextKeys.enabledin action/command registration - This context key is
falsewhen AI features are disabled
- Example:
- Programmatic Hiding: Check
IChatEntitlementService.sentiment.hiddento determine if AI features should be hiddensentiment.hiddenistruewhen the user signals no intent in using Chat- This should not only disable Chat but also hide all of its UI
This ensures consistency when implementing AI-powered UI functionality across the codebase.
Rendering Agent-Provided Markdown
- Determine content provenance before rendering markdown. Content authored by an agent must be treated as untrusted; localized VS Code text, tool implementation messages, extension metadata, and other internally authored content do not automatically require the same restrictions.
- Render agent-provided markdown with
ChatContentMarkdownRenderer. When a generic markdown renderer is required, applygetChatMarkdownRenderOptions().
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 · 27 lines · 370 tokens per session scan A 2f7ddfb21166
vscode chat.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/vscode (194,219 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 370 tokens to every session, about $0.0015 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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