Add comprehensive .github/copilot-instructions.md for coding agent onboarding #43
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Overview
This PR adds a comprehensive
.github/copilot-instructions.md
file to improve coding agent efficiency when working on this repository. The instructions serve as a single source of truth for understanding the project structure, build system, and development workflow.Motivation
Without project-specific instructions, coding agents spend significant time:
This document addresses these issues by providing validated, comprehensive guidance.
What's Included
1. High-Level Project Details
2. Validated Build Instructions
Complete, tested sequences for:
make build
,make generate
,make fmt
All commands were validated against the actual build system.
3. Project Architecture & Layout
.github/workflows/ci.yaml
4. Common Issues & Workarounds
Documented 7+ common scenarios with solutions:
5. File Modification Guidelines
Step-by-step instructions for:
.fpp
and implementation files)Benefits
This documentation will:
make fmt
and understand CI requirementsFile Statistics
Warning
Firewall rules blocked me from connecting to one or more addresses (expand for details)
I tried to connect to the following addresses, but was blocked by firewall rules:
astral.sh
curl -LsSf REDACTED
(dns block)If you need me to access, download, or install something from one of these locations, you can either:
Original prompt
Your task is to "onboard" this repository to Copilot coding agent by adding a .github/copilot-instructions.md file in the repository that contains information describing how a coding agent seeing it for the first time can work most efficiently.
You will do this task only one time per repository and doing a good job can SIGNIFICANTLY improve the quality of the agent's work, so take your time, think carefully, and search thoroughly before writing the instructions.
- Reduce the likelihood of a coding agent pull request getting rejected by the user due to generating code that fails the continuous integration build, fails a validation pipeline, or having misbehavior. - Minimize bash command and build failures. - Allow the agent to complete its task more quickly by minimizing the need for exploration using grep, find, str_replace_editor, and code search tools. - Instructions must be no longer than 2 pages. - Instructions must not be task specific.Add the following high level details about the codebase to reduce the amount of searching the agent has to do to understand the codebase each time:
Add information about how to build and validate changes so the agent does not need to search and find it each time.
List key facts about the layout and architecture of the codebase to help the agent find where to make changes with minimal searching.
of configuration files for linting, compilation, testing, and preferences.
contents of the README, the contents of any key source files, the list of files in the next level down of directories, giving priority to the more structurally important and snippets of code from key source files, such as the one containing the main method.
✨ Let Copilot coding agent set things up for you — coding agent works faster and does higher quality work when set up for your repo.