Skip to content

Title: Tool restriction priority between copilot-instructions.md and AGENTS.md #701

@Hellbender643

Description

@Hellbender643

Describe the feature or problem you'd like to solve

 I observed unexpected behavior with tool restrictions when using custom agents.

Proposed solution

 Expected behavior:
 When using @readonly-agent (defined in AGENTS.md with only view/read tools allowed),
 I expected all modification operations (str_replace, create, delete) to be blocked.

 Actual behavior:
 The agent was able to execute str_replace, create, and powershell commands
 despite AGENTS.md specifying only view/read tools.

 Questions:
 1. What is the priority order between .github/copilot-instructions.md and AGENTS.md
    for tool permissions?
 2. Can AGENTS.md restrict/deny tools that are allowed in copilot-instructions.md?
 3. What is the intended behavior for tool restriction inheritance?

 Environment:
 - GitHub Copilot CLI version: 0.0.349
 - Custom agent defined in AGENTS.md
 - Tool restrictions specified in agent definition

Example prompts or workflows

No response

Additional context

No response

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions