scholar-agent: Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

.github/copilot-instructions.md

scholar-agent copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file for GitHub Copilot from zfy465914233/scholar-agent. It costs 528 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of instructions for an academic research assistant that searches papers and combines findings from sources such as arXiv, Semantic Scholar, and DBLP.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find and compare academic papers, summarize research, assess options, and show where each claim came from.
Why use it?
It helps keep research evidence-based, time-aware, and clear about uncertainty instead of presenting unsupported conclusions.

Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

Written for GitHub Copilot: a Copilot instructions file.

This is zfy465914233/scholar-agent's own configuration. It tells GitHub Copilot how to work on scholar-agent 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 scholar-agent configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to zfy465914233/scholar-agent. 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/zfy465914233/scholar-agent/main/.github/copilot-instructions.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/zfy465914233/scholar-agent

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 scholar-agent copilot-instructions.md

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/zfy465914233/scholar-agent/copilot-instructions.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/zfy465914233/scholar-agent/copilot-instructions)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/zfy465914233/scholar-agent/copilot-instructions"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/zfy465914233/scholar-agent/copilot-instructions.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 528 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 528 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 $0.00528 $0.00528
Opus 5 $0.00264 $0.00264
Sonnet 5 $0.00106 $0.00106
Haiku 4.5 $0.00053 $0.00053

Measured 8d ago against content hash 93f8daf2d317, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

scholar-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 8d 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/copilot-instructions.md · 40 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 40 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Global Instructions

Project Context

This is Scholar Agent — a knowledge flywheel MCP server with an academic paper research pipeline. It combines domain knowledge retrieval, structured research synthesis, and academic paper analysis (arXiv/Semantic Scholar/DBLP).

Core Constraints

  1. Backend academic search runs via public APIs (OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, DBLP) — zero API keys needed for the backend layer. General web search is delegated to the LLM's built-in search capability. Frontend reasoning uses online models (Claude, Copilot) which require their own API access.
  2. No local LLM is needed.
  3. Evidence-first. Never present conclusions without citing sources.
  4. All outputs must include temporal context — when was the evidence retrieved, when was it published.
  5. For "best option" questions, always state the evaluation criteria (freshness, engineering maturity, community activity, reproducibility).

Output Principles

  1. Prefer structured output over prose.
  2. Explicitly mark uncertainty — distinguish "confirmed" from "likely" from "unknown".
  3. Avoid marketing-style summaries. Prefer reproducibility and engineering maturity over hype.
  4. When comparing options, use tables with consistent dimensions.

Evidence Handling

  1. All evidence must conform to the project evidence schema (src/scholar_agent/schemas/evidence.schema.json).
  2. Conclusions must explicitly link back to evidence items.
  3. When evidence conflicts, surface the conflict rather than silently picking a side.

Knowledge Organization

  1. Organize knowledge/ primarily by narrow topic folders such as qpe/, markov_chain/, quantum_phase_estimation/, linear_programming/, and model_quantization/.
  2. Do not create deeper type-based folders like definitions/, methods/, or theorems/ under a domain. Keep files directly inside the domain folder.
  3. Use frontmatter metadata such as type to distinguish definitions, methods, theorems, derivations, comparisons, and decision records.
  4. When draft-stage or promotion-stage files need to coexist with curated materials, distinguish them with filename prefixes such as draft- and candidate-.
  5. Each topic folder should include a short README.md describing what belongs there and how filenames are used.
  6. Shared templates live in src/scholar_agent/templates/ (paper analysis). Knowledge cards should not have nested template folders.

Read the full file on GitHub · 40 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. 8d ago First seen · 40 lines · 528 tokens per session scan A 93f8daf2d317

Subscribe to this mod's changes

scholar-agent copilot-instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository zfy465914233/scholar-agent (9 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 528 tokens to every session, about $0.0026 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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