[theshrike79]

I need to steal the specification idea.

Cursor w/ Claude has a habit of running away on tangents instead of solving just the one problem, then I need to reject its changes and even roll back to a previous version.

With a proper specification as guideline it might stay on track a bit better.

[prettyblocks]

Copilot supports this somewhat natively:

https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/customizing-copilot/addin...

The first thing I do for a new project is ask Copilot to create a custom-instructions.md for me and then as I work on my projects, I ask it to update the instructions every now and then based on the current state of my project.

Much less misses this way in my experience.

[theshrike79]

Cool!

I just spent last night working with Cursor and Claude Code, both support different styles of custom rules.

Then I got to work and was lamenting what my corp sponsored Copilot can't do the same - but turns out it can! :D

EDIT: Just tried it and Copilot is completely clueless. It can explain the file, but doesn't know how to generate one. Claude generates its own CLAUDE.md on startup. Cursor can create its own rulefiles pretty well, even better if you add a rule for generating rules.

[prettyblocks]

I have had success with having copilot generate the file for me with no issues. I use sonnet 3.5 or 3.7. I start by writing a paragraph describing the project and it does pretty well.