[keithnoizu]

I came across a nice little solution in copilot X and copilot 365/pro for including and referencing custom instructions to add behavior/formatting support to copilot (e.g. edit mode, article writing mode, documentation writting mode etc.)

[ano-ther]

Neat!

How do you get copilot to use these instructions? Can you define a “default include” somewhere?

[keithnoizu]

I feel like the explicitly go out of their away to avoid building in custom instructions/increased prompt context to lower their costs so this is a bit of a work around.

[keithnoizu]

copilot scans open files so I mention the file name in my prompt or reference the file explicitly using the reference file option in the chat window in the intellij copilot chat beta.

``` Follow the instructions for preparing responses from the COPILOT.md file in how you answer and format your answer to the following prompt.

<whatever my request was> ```

[ano-ther]

Thank you