A curated collection of reusable GitHub Copilot agent instruction files for VS Code and IntelliJ IDEA — built for professional software teams.
Each .md file in the /agents directory is a self-contained agent instruction set you can load into GitHub Copilot Chat to give it a focused persona, specialized behavior, and domain expertise — no plugins required.
Think of each agent as a senior expert on-call for a specific engineering task.
Option A — Attach as context in Copilot Chat:
> Attach file → agents/code-reviewer.md
Then ask your question normally. Copilot uses the agent's instructions as context.
Option B — Workspace-level default agent:
Copy any agent's content into .github/copilot-instructions.md in your project root.
Option C — Reference inline:
#file:agents/code-reviewer.md Review this PR diff
- Open Copilot Chat panel (
View → Tool Windows → GitHub Copilot) - Paste the contents of any agent
.mdfile as a system prompt or prefix message - Continue chatting — Copilot will adopt the agent persona for the session
| Agent | File | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Code Reviewer | agents/code-reviewer.md |
PR reviews, quality gates |
| Architecture Advisor | agents/architecture-advisor.md |
System design, trade-offs |
| Test Engineer | agents/test-engineer.md |
Unit, integration, E2E tests |
| Security Auditor | agents/security-auditor.md |
Vulnerability scanning, OWASP |
| Docs Writer | agents/docs-writer.md |
READMEs, Javadoc, JSDoc |
| Refactoring Expert | agents/refactoring-expert.md |
Clean code, SOLID, DRY |
| Debug Detective | agents/debug-detective.md |
Root cause analysis, logs |
| API Designer | agents/api-designer.md |
REST, GraphQL, OpenAPI |
| Database Optimizer | agents/database-optimizer.md |
SQL, indexes, query plans |
| DevOps Engineer | agents/devops-engineer.md |
CI/CD, Docker, Kubernetes |
| Performance Profiler | agents/performance-profiler.md |
Bottlenecks, memory, CPU |
| Onboarding Guide | agents/onboarding-guide.md |
New devs, codebase walkthrough |
Each agent follows a consistent structure:
# Agent Name
**Role:** ...
**Expertise:** ...
## Behavior
...
## Rules
...
## Output Format
...Pull requests are welcome! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md before submitting a new agent.
Agent quality checklist:
- Clear role definition
- Specific, actionable rules (not vague)
- Output format specified
- Tested in both VS Code and IntelliJ Copilot Chat
- No hallucination-prone instructions