Copilot-Skills: Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

.github/instructions/web-research.instructions.md

Copilot-Skills web-research.instructions.md is an instructions file for GitHub Copilot from TheSethRose/Copilot-Skills. It costs 2,344 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of instructions for researching topics on the web using sources such as official documentation, MDN, and GitHub. It covers quick research, deeper library research, source checking, and collecting code examples.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate technical topics, compare documentation, gather examples, and build research reports.
Why use it?
It provides a repeatable research process instead of relying on one source or unsupported assumptions. It also helps preserve useful findings for later work.

Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

Written for GitHub Copilot: a Copilot instructions file.

This is TheSethRose/Copilot-Skills's own configuration. It tells GitHub Copilot how to work on Copilot-Skills itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything Copilot-Skills configures →

Needs its repository: it runs a file that does not travel with it, so clone the repository first. The line is - See full research index: ./output/react_data/index.json.

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to TheSethRose/Copilot-Skills. 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/TheSethRose/Copilot-Skills/main/.github/instructions/web-research.instructions.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/TheSethRose/Copilot-Skills

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.

agentmods badge for Copilot-Skills web-research.instructions.md

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/thesethrose/copilot-skills/web-research.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/thesethrose/copilot-skills/web-research)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/thesethrose/copilot-skills/web-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/thesethrose/copilot-skills/web-research.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 2,344 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 2,344 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.02344 $0.02344
Opus 5 $0.01172 $0.01172
Sonnet 5 $0.00469 $0.00469
Haiku 4.5 $0.00234 $0.00234

Measured 3d ago against content hash d0d40721c2c3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Copilot-Skills web-research.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/instructions/web-research.instructions.md · 330 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 330 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Web Research Instructions

Auto-loaded when: Working with files matching: **/*.py, **/*.js, **/*.ts, **/*.md, **/research*, **/web*, **/scrape*, **/crawler*, **/knowledge*

Triggers: research, web, search, documentation, scrape, crawler, learning, knowledge-base

Default Behaviors

When conducting research on web topics:

  1. Search First: Always start with authoritative sources (official docs, MDN, GitHub)
  2. Multi-Source: Never rely on single source-verify patterns across sources
  3. Incremental Scraping: Use checkpoint system for long-running crawls
  4. Pattern Extraction: Look for repeated patterns across all sources
  5. Code Examples: Always extract and categorize code samples with language detection
  6. Cache Results: Reuse previous research for related queries
  7. Terminal Output: All research reports output to terminal for human review

Common Workflows

Quick Topic Research

/web-research --query "topic" --quick
# Returns: Key concepts, examples, recommended resources
# Time: 30 seconds
# Best for: Quick overview before deeper research

Comprehensive Library Research

/web-research --query "React hooks" --sources react.dev,reactjs.org --depth 3
# Returns: All documentation, patterns, code examples
# Time: 2-5 minutes (with caching)
# Best for: Learning new library thoroughly

Comparative Research

/web-research --query "ORMs" --sources prisma,typeorm,drizzle --compare
# Returns: Feature comparison, when to use each
# Time: 3-10 minutes
# Best for: Technology selection and comparison

Generate Skill from Research

/web-research --query "Next.js" --scrape --export-skill
# Returns: Complete skill directory with patterns.md, reference.md
# Time: 10-20 minutes
# Best for: Creating permanent Copilot Skills from research

Deep Research Project

/web-research --query "kubernetes architecture" --depth 3 --resume
# Returns: Comprehensive 30+ page research report
# Time: 30+ minutes (checkpoint enables resumption)
# Best for: Deep technical analysis with recovery

Read the full file on GitHub · 330 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 · 330 lines · 2,344 tokens per session scan A d0d40721c2c3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Copilot-Skills web-research.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository TheSethRose/Copilot-Skills (3 stars, last pushed 9mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 2,344 tokens to every session, about $0.0117 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 2026-09-03.

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