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// Bart Kessels //
Setting up shared knowledge with Copilot instructions
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Category: AI
[GitHub Copilot|Agentic|Agents|Shared Knowledge|Copilot instructions]

Setting up shared knowledge with Copilot instructions

All the agents in your team should properly work together and have access to the same knowledge, just like in a regular team. To accomplish this we can make use of the Copilot instructions.

Bart Kessels 2 min read

Part of the series

Create a complete team with agents

Because we now have a team of agents that all work on the same project, we should give them some extra context about our project. Within Visual Studio Code you can use the copilot-instructions.md file. This file is automatically applied to chat requests within the current workspace (Visual Studio Code, 2026). Visual Studio Code also supports other instruction files, such as AGENTS.md for agent-oriented workflows and .instructions.md files for more specific rules. In this post, we focus on the copilot-instructions.md file because it is the simplest project-wide starting point.

The copilot-instructions.md file can be used for various project-specific standards such as coding style and naming conventions (Visual Studio Code, 2026). In our project, we want to include coding standards, UX-related standards, and a link to the Obsidian plugin documentation.

Create the file

Create the copilot-instructions.md file inside the .github/ folder in the root of your workspace. I used Copilot to set up the initial contents of the instruction file. You can find the prompt for this below, and you should change all the project-specific details in your own prompts.

For this project I have set up an agent team that will implement new features, fix bugs, and be responsible for refactoring this plugin. Because multiple agents will work in this repository, I need them to have shared knowledge about the project. For that reason, you must create a `.github/copilot-instructions.md` file.

## Information about the project
- The project is built using TypeScript and React
- The project is an Obsidian plugin, using the Obsidian TypeScript API (https://docs.obsidian.md/Reference/TypeScript+API/Reference)
- The project uses a layered structure with dependency injection to separate the various business concerns from the UI related logic

Analyze the entire project and list all necessary information about this project in the `.github/copilot-instructions.md` file. Create the file using the best practices from the following resources
- https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/customization/custom-instructions#_use-a-githubcopilotinstructionsmd-file
- https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/tutorials/use-custom-instructions
- https://github.blog/ai-and-ml/github-copilot/5-tips-for-writing-better-custom-instructions-for-copilot/