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/oss.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/oss)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/microsoft/vscode/oss"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/vscode/oss/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/oss"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/vscode/oss.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 | $0.00286 | $0.00286 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00114 | $0.00114 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00057 | $0.00057 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00029 | $0.00029 |
Grade A, and why
vscode oss.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.
Copies of this mod
1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:
- nyrve oss.instructions.md — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
What it actually says
OSS License Review
When reviewing changes to these files, verify:
ThirdPartyNotices.txt
- Every new entry has a license type header (e.g., "MIT License", "Apache License 2.0")
- License text is present and non-empty for every entry
- License text matches the declared license type (e.g., MIT-declared entry actually contains MIT license text, not Apache)
- Removed entries are cleanly removed (no leftover fragments)
- Entries are sorted alphabetically by package name
cglicenses.json
- New overrides have a justification comment
- No obviously stale entries for packages no longer in the dependency tree
cgmanifest.json
- Package versions match what's actually installed
- Repository URLs are valid and point to real source repositories
- Newly added license identifiers should use SPDX format where possible
- License identifiers match the corresponding ThirdPartyNotices.txt entries
Red Flags
- Any newly added copyleft license (GPL, LGPL, AGPL) — flag immediately (existing copyleft entries like ffmpeg are pre-approved)
- Any "UNKNOWN" or placeholder license text
- License text that appears truncated or corrupted
- A package declared as MIT but with Apache/BSD/other license text (or vice versa)
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 · 35 lines · 286 tokens per session scan A fe4dfb436f27
vscode oss.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/vscode (194,254 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 286 tokens to every session, about $0.0011 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.
Other instructions, from other repositories
next.js AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for vercel/next.js, covering next.js development guide, codebase structure, monorepo overview, core package: packages/next and other important packages.
langchain AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for langchain-ai/langchain, covering global development guidelines for the langchain monorepo, corridor security analysis, project architecture and context, monorepo structure and development tools & commands.
deepseek-harness AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness, covering agents.md, pre-stable apis and released session data, repository layout, commands and host sandbox failures.
generative-ai-for-beginners AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for microsoft/generative-ai-for-beginners, covering agents.md, project overview, setup commands, initial repository setup and clone the repository.
deno copilot-instructions.md
Copilot instructions for denoland/deno, covering deno development guide for github copilot, network access, high level overview, key directories and key files to understand first.