Chris explores Copilot custom agents and custom instructions, restructuring project context files and creating meta instruction files for a more effective AI-assisted development workflow.
Topics Covered
GitHub Changelog Roundup — Enterprise bring-your-own-key for Copilot, linter integration with Copilot code review (ESLint, PMD), GitHub Actions cache size exceeding 10 GB, Claude Opus 4.5 in public preview, and secret scanning updates.
Custom Instructions Deep Dive — Restructuring copilot-instructions.md to include monorepo tech stack details, build order, service boundaries, security guidelines, and testing conventions using recommended practices from the docs.
Meta Instruction Files — Creating instruction files that teach Copilot how to write better custom instructions and custom agents, pulling in recommended practices from the GitHub and VS Code documentation.
Plan Mode for Agent Design — Using Copilot’s plan mode to iterate on ideas before implementation, demonstrating how follow-up questions help refine requirements like rubber duck debugging.
Context Engineering — Discussion on supplying the right context to Copilot, balancing context window size, and the importance of being requirements-driven for high-quality code generation.
Community Q&A — Topics including sustainable engineering pace, avoiding burnout, handling merge conflicts, and the fundamentals of software quality.
