Instruction file named `skill-instructions.instructions.md` is silently ignored
- Dominant language
- Shell
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- Merged PRs (30d)
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Description
### Bug
`.github/instructions/skill-instructions.instructions.md` is silently dropped — never appears in the model's system prompt, no warning, no log. Rename to literally anything else (e.g. `skill-table.instructions.md`) with identical content and frontmatter → loads correctly.
Likely collides with the `SKILLS_INSTRUCTIONS` feature flag visible in `~/.copilot/logs/`. If that filename is reserved internally, at minimum emit a warning instead of silently swallowing user files.
### Why I care
I only needed this file in the first place because the CLI truncates the `` list (see #2314, #1130, #2416) — I have 45 skills, only ~31 show up, and the budget is a hardcoded tiny character cap. Meanwhile MCP tool schemas dump 10–100× more tokens into the same system prompt with no cap at all. It's a completely arbitrary penalty on skills.
So the workflow people are forced into — "auto-generate a skill registry file because the CLI won't load my skills properly" — is exactly the workflow that this silent filename filter breaks.
### Fix (any of)
1. Don't reserve user-space filenames; rename the internal feature.
2. Warn visibly when a matching file is found and skipped.
3. Document the reserved names.
### Affected version
1.0.30
Contributor guide
Research direction
Start by reproducing with `.github/instructions/skill-instructions.instructions.md`, then compare it with the same content under `skill-table.instructions.md`; inspect `~/.copilot/logs/` for evidence of the `SKILLS_INSTRUCTIONS` collision. Done means the reserved-name behavior is removed or a visible warning is emitted when the file is skipped, with the renamed and original files behaving as documented.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- shell
- Domain
- cli
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 3/5
- Estimated time
- 1-2 days
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 58/100