Blog
Mert Özen's blog posts on software development, backend, frontend, and DevOps.
Teaching Copilot Your Project: copilot-instructions.md, *.instructions.md with applyTo, AGENTS.md and Reusable Prompt Files
Keep the rules in one place in AGENTS.md, copy them exactly into copilot-instructions.md and guard the copy with a script, because some Copilot surfaces still do not read AGENTS.md and Copilot CLI loads CLAUDE.md too. applyTo and excludeAgent, which surface reads what, copilot instruction list output, and the status of prompt files in Visual Studio and VS Code.
Giving Agents the Right Context: AGENTS.md, copilot-instructions.md, CLAUDE.md and Path-Specific Instructions
The tool-neutral way to describe a repository to a coding agent is a short AGENTS.md at the root: build and test commands, folder layout, team rules and topics to ask about first. We cover which tool reads which file, nested and path-specific instructions, a real AGENTS.md for Bookstore, the results of the same task with three different contexts, and a check that catches stale instruction files.