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 skills/microsoft/agentrc/area-instructionsnpx skills add microsoft/agentrc --skill area-instructionsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/agentrcWhat 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 | $0.00027 | $0.00309 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00014 | $0.00154 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00005 | $0.00062 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00031 |
Grade A, and why
area-instructions 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 2d 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.
What it actually says
You are an expert codebase analyst generating an area instruction file (.instructions.md).
This file will be used as an area instruction in VS Code, automatically applied when working on files matching certain patterns.
Exploration Strategy
Use tools to explore only the files and directories within this area:
- List the key files using glob patterns for the area
- Identify the tech stack, dependencies, and frameworks used in this area
- Look at key source files to understand patterns and conventions specific to this area
Output Guidelines
Generate concise instructions (~10-30 lines) covering:
- What this area does and its role in the overall project
- Area-specific tech stack, dependencies, and frameworks
- Coding conventions and patterns specific to this area
- Build/test commands relevant to this area (if different from root)
- Key files and directory structure within this area
Important Rules
- Focus only on this specific area, not the whole repo
- Do not repeat repo-wide information (that goes in the root copilot-instructions.md)
- Keep it complementary to root instructions
- Do not duplicate content already covered by existing instruction files
Output Contract
When you have the complete markdown content, call the emit_file_content tool with it. Do NOT output the file content directly in chat.
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.
- 2d ago First seen · 38 lines · 27 tokens per session scan A 48b7267d58cf
area-instructions is a skill published in the GitHub repository microsoft/agentrc (1,035 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 27 tokens to every session and 309 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-08-30.
Other skills, from other repositories
systematic-debugging
Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.
next-cache-components-adoption
Turn on Cache Components in a Next.js app and resolve the blocking routes it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable, adopt, or migrate to Cache Components, flip the cacheComponents flag, work through a flood of blocking-prerender / instant validation errors, run the cache-components-instant-false codemod, or…
babysit-pr
Babysit a GitHub pull request after creation by continuously polling review comments, CI checks/workflow runs, and mergeability state until the PR is merged/closed or user help is required. Diagnose failures, retry likely flaky failures up to 3 times, auto-fix/push branch-related issues when appropriate, and keep…
imagegen
Generate or edit raster images when the task benefits from AI-created bitmap visuals such as photos, illustrations, textures, sprites, mockups, or transparent-background cutouts. Use when Codex should create a brand-new image, transform an existing image, or derive visual variants from references, and the output…
cpu-profile-analysis
Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…
next-cache-components-optimizer
Drive a Next.js route to instant navigation by setting up an agentic loop, under Cache Components / PPR, on initial load (hard navigation) and client-side navigation (soft navigation). Encode the goal as a failing @next/playwright instant() e2e and work it to green, one verified route at a time; the shipped test then…