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Instructions ​

Instructions are written in natural language with Markdown format.

Typically include:

  • Project overview, including it's purpose, goals, and any relevant background information.
  • Program architecture, standards and conventions
  • Security requirements and checklists
  • Performance optimization priorities
  • Team-specific preferences and style guides
  • Language-specific review criteria

Examples ​

Repository-wide instructions ​

Applies to all code in the repository.

Ex: .github/copilot-instructions.md

md
## Security

- Validate input sanitization practices.
- Search for risks that might expose user data.
- Prefer loading configuration and content from the database instead of hard coded content. If absolutely necessary, load it from environment variables or a non-committed config file.

## Code Quality

- Use consistent naming conventions.
- Try to reduce code duplication.
- Prefer maintainability and readability over optimization.
- If a method is used a lot, try to optimize it for performance.
- Prefer explicit error handling over silent failures.
md
## Overview

## Development Environment

## Program architecture

- The website users are the students and teachers. Make sure the user experience is simple.
- Do not make additional apps or services.
- Do not make command line tools.
- Do not create a long single file application. Always use an easy-to-understand directory structure.
- Only use HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Python. No other languages.

## Documentation

- Always update the README file to explain how to use the program. Assume the user will quickly forget so good documentation is important.
- Once the readme gets too long, start organizing it into a docs directory.

## Code Quality

## Security considerations

Path-specific instructions ​

Applies to specific files to create focused criteria for different parts of your codebase.

Ex: .github/instructions/NAME.instructions.md

md
---
applyTo: "tests/**/**,docs/*.md"
---

# Testing Guidelines ...
md
---
applyTo: "docs/*.md,README.md"
---

# Documentation Guidelines ...