Backend Standards

Backend Standards is an instructions file for GitHub Copilot from yuri-semenenko/ai-engineering-workspace. It costs 154 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

Guidance for backend services, APIs, databases, and reliability, including input validation, focused queries, transactions, typed contracts, retries, and error handling.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when changing API endpoints, server logic, SQL queries, database schemas, migrations, or operations that may be retried.
Why use it?
It helps prevent unsafe inputs, leaked internal errors, duplicate work, slow database access, and schema changes that are difficult to undo.

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/yuri-semenenko/ai-engineering-workspace/backend
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/yuri-semenenko/ai-engineering-workspace

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 Backend Standards

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/yuri-semenenko/ai-engineering-workspace/backend.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/yuri-semenenko/ai-engineering-workspace/backend)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/yuri-semenenko/ai-engineering-workspace/backend"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/yuri-semenenko/ai-engineering-workspace/backend.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 154 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 154 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 $0.00154 $0.00154
Opus 5 $0.00077 $0.00077
Sonnet 5 $0.00031 $0.00031
Haiku 4.5 $0.00015 $0.00015

Measured 4d ago against content hash 09ad2482e4eb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Backend Standards 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 4d 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.

copilot/workspace-template/.github/instructions/backend.instructions.md · 31 lines

What it actually says

Backend Standards

Follow existing API and persistence patterns.

Prefer:

  • explicit input validation
  • narrow database queries
  • clear transaction boundaries
  • typed API contracts
  • idempotent mutations where retries are possible
  • structured error handling
  • observable failure paths

Avoid:

  • leaking internal errors to clients
  • swallowing errors without context
  • adding retries around logic bugs
  • broad data fetches that create avoidable N+1 behavior
  • schema changes without migration and rollback consideration

For SQL, prefer readable queries, explicit indexes for new access paths, and constraints that encode real invariants.

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. 4d ago First seen · 31 lines · 154 tokens per session scan A 09ad2482e4eb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Backend Standards is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository yuri-semenenko/ai-engineering-workspace (1 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 154 tokens to every session, about $0.0008 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.

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