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.
npx agentmods add instructions/trsdn/github-copilot-agent/copilot-instructionsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/trsdn/github-copilot-agentWhat 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 | $0.00590 | $0.00590 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00295 | $0.00295 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00118 | $0.00118 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00059 | $0.00059 |
Grade A, and why
github-copilot-agent 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 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 45 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Copilot Instructions
These instructions are automatically applied to every Copilot Chat session in this workspace.
Project Context
This is a GitHub Copilot Customization Blueprint — a template repository for bootstrapping Copilot agents, prompt files, instructions, skills, and hooks in any project.
Conventions
- All customization files live under
.github/(agents, prompts, skills, instructions, hooks) - Use Conventional Commits for all commit messages:
<type>(<scope>): <description> - Allowed types:
feat,fix,docs,style,refactor,perf,test,build,ci,chore,revert - Agent files:
.agent.mdwith YAML frontmatter (descriptionrequired,nameandtoolsrecommended) - Prompt files:
.prompt.mdwith YAML frontmatter (descriptionrecommended) - Skill files:
SKILL.mdin a named directory under.github/skills/<name>/(alt locations:.claude/skills/,.agents/skills/) - Hook configs: JSON files in
.github/hooks/defining lifecycle automation - MCP configs:
.vscode/mcp.jsonfor VS Code workspace MCP,mcp-serversin GitHub Copilot agent frontmatter,.mcp.jsonin plugins - Agent plugin manifests:
plugin.jsonin plugin roots; keep example manifests inert as*.example.json - Tool sets group built-in, MCP, and extension tools; keep examples inert unless deliberately enabled via VS Code
- Use
user-invocableanddisable-model-invocationinstead of the deprecatedinferfield - For multi-agent workspaces,
AGENTS.md(root or experimental nested) andCLAUDE.mdare also recognized as always-on instructions - For monorepos opened in a subfolder, enable
chat.useCustomizationsInParentRepositoriesto discover customizations from the repo root
File Structure
.github/
├── agents/ # Custom agent profiles (.agent.md)
├── prompts/ # Prompt templates (.prompt.md)
├── instructions/ # Scoped instruction files (*.instructions.md)
├── skills/ # Agent Skills (each in its own directory with SKILL.md)
├── hooks/ # Hook configuration files (*.json)
├── workflows/ # GitHub Actions (release, validate, commit-lint)
└── copilot-instructions.md # This file
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.
- yesterday First seen · 45 lines · 590 tokens per session scan A a8bf6ce2ded4
github-copilot-agent copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository trsdn/github-copilot-agent (3 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 590 tokens to every session, about $0.0030 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 2026-08-31.
Other instructions, from other repositories
apm cli.instructions.md
CLI Design Guidelines for visual output, styling, and user experience standards.
apm integrators.instructions.md
Architecture rules for file-level integrators (BaseIntegrator pattern).
apm architecture.instructions.md
Single canonical owner discipline: one authority per durable decision, guarded by a regression test + a static boundary check.
apm cicd.instructions.md
CI/CD Pipeline configuration for PyInstaller binary packaging and release workflow.
apm encoding.instructions.md
Cross-platform encoding rules — keep all source and CLI output within printable ASCII.
apm changelog.instructions.md
Changelog format and conventions based on Keep a Changelog.