copilot-shared

A shared collection of GitHub Copilot prompts, skills, and instructions.

Work in progress. These are drafts. Content is being extracted from project-specific repositories and generalized for reuse across projects. Expect rough edges, missing pieces, and instructions that still reference their origin project.

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Main focus: shared Copilot workflows

The first goal of this repository is still to pin down a reliable workflow for writing good conventional commit messages and grouping staged changes into coherent commits. It now also carries reusable prompts, skills, an agent, and local helper scripts for analysis, implementation checks, refactors, and a.commit replay.

• .github/prompts/write-commit-message.prompt.md — write a single commit message from a diff in context.
• .github/skills/group-commits-msg/SKILL.md — group staged files by topic and produce one commit message per group, saved to a.commit.
• .github/skills/implement-step/SKILL.md — implement one step from a design or plan document.
• .github/skills/implementation-check/SKILL.md — check whether a plan step is fully implemented.
• tools/git_batch_commit.py — validate and replay grouped commits from a.commit.

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Contents

.github/
├─ agents/
│  └─ split-large-file.agent.md         split a large file or class
├─ blacklist.md                          instruction: words to avoid in all responses
├─ copilot-instructions.md               shared chat and code-writing rules
├─ markdown.instructions.md              instruction: markdown formatting rules
├─ preserve_code.md                      instruction: never truncate code when rewriting
├─ prompts/
│  ├─ analyse.prompt.md                  guide read-only analysis
│  ├─ check-api*.prompt.md               review API dumps for architecture smells
│  ├─ check-plan-implementation.prompt.md check whether a plan step landed
│  ├─ continue-analyse.prompt.md         continue a prior analysis thread
│  ├─ discuss.prompt.md                  answer and challenge without code
│  ├─ extend-test-coverage.prompt.md     extend tests around selected code
│  ├─ fix-issue.prompt.md                fix a selected issue in context
│  ├─ lower-cyclomatic-complexity.prompt.md refactor complex code
│  ├─ rewrite-docstring.prompt.md        shorten docstrings without losing meaning
│  ├─ write-commit-message.prompt.md     write a conventional commit from a diff
│  ├─ write-doc-commit-message.prompt.md write a docs: commit from a markdown document
│  ├─ write-release-notes-summary.prompt.md summarize a release from commit subjects
│  └─ write-plan.prompt.md               write a numbered implementation plan
└─ skills/
   ├─ group-commits-msg/
   │  ├─ SKILL.md                        group staged files and write one commit each
   │  └─ TEMPLATE.md                     template for the a.commit file format
   ├─ implement-step/
   │  └─ SKILL.md                        implement one plan step from markdown context
   └─ implementation-check/
      └─ SKILL.md                        check whether one plan step is complete
tools/
├─ git_batch_commit.py                   validate and replay grouped commits
└─ git_command.py                        local cross-platform Git helper
senv.bat                                 local shell aliases for the tooling

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How to use copilot-shared from another project

The intended setup is to reference this repository from an existing project's workspace. Keep the real project as the first folder in the workspace and add copilot-shared as the second folder. Do not make copilot-shared the main workspace folder when the goal is to use its prompts inside another codebase.

In the existing project's .code-workspace file, the folders section should look like this:

{
  "folders": [
    {
      "path": ".."
    },
    {
      "path": "../../copilot-shared"
    }
  ]
}

With this layout, .. points to the existing project and ../../copilot-shared points to the shared repository. VS Code will discover the prompts under .github/prompts/, the skills under .github/skills/, and the agent definitions under .github/agents/ from both workspace folders.

The checked-in .vscode/copilot-shared.code-workspace file in this repository is only for working on copilot-shared itself. When you want to use the shared prompts in another codebase, the other project's workspace file should own the multi-root setup.

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Status of main areas

Area	Status	Notes
Shared writing rules	draft	Includes blacklist, markdown rules, and full-file rewrite rules.
Commit message workflow	draft	Main focus, with a.commit planning and replay support.
Analysis and review prompts	draft	Covers API review, plan checks, discussions, and issue work.
Step-based skills and agent	draft	Includes step implementation, implementation checks, and file splitting.
Local helper scripts	draft	Includes senv.bat, git_batch_commit.py, and git_command.py.