Skip to content

Add instruction altitude guidance and context engineering reference #1297

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
eanders-tdy wants to merge 1 commit into
base: staged
Choose a base branch
from
+14 −0
Open

Add instruction altitude guidance and context engineering reference #1297

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
1 commit
Select commit
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
14 changes: 14 additions & 0 deletions instructions/instructions.instructions.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -103,6 +103,18 @@ code example here
- **Stay Current**: Reference current versions and best practices
- **Link Resources**: Include official documentation and authoritative sources

### Instruction Altitude (Goldilocks Zone)

- Start with the minimum rule set that fully defines expected outcomes
- Add constraints after observed failures, not hypothetical edge cases
- Prefer high-signal examples over exhaustive decision tables

| Altitude | Failure Mode | Result |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Over-specified | Brittle if-else prose | Breaks on unlisted cases |
| Under-specified | Assumes shared context | Generic outputs |
| Right altitude | Heuristics + examples | Stable, generalizable quality |

### Common Patterns to Include

1. **Naming Conventions**: How to name variables, functions, classes, files
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -180,6 +192,7 @@ function getUser(id: any): any {
- **Missing examples**: Abstract rules without concrete code examples
- **Contradictory advice**: Ensure consistency throughout the file
- **Copy-paste from documentation**: Add value by distilling and contextualizing
- **Hypothetical-rule inflation**: Do not add rules for failures that have not occurred

## Testing Your Instructions

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -254,3 +267,4 @@ Description and example

- [Custom Instructions Documentation](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/customization/custom-instructions)
- [Awesome Copilot Instructions](https://github.com/github/awesome-copilot/tree/main/instructions)
- [System Prompt Altitude — Effective Context Engineering for AI Agents](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/effective-context-engineering-for-ai-agents#the-anatomy-of-effective-context)
Loading