Do these work for Visual Studio or these are for VS Code only?

[firozjokhi]

I use Visual Studio for Unity game development. There's a lot of instructions I have to remind copilot about each time I use it in my project. Would love to have instructions in .md files for it to always use as context.

[artemsaveliev]

Custom instructions and prompt files should work https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/copilot-chat-context?view=vs-2022#enable-custom-instructions

Can't find references to custom chat mode support in https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/copilot-agent-mode?view=vs-2022

[aaronpowell]

Yep, there's no custom chat modes in Visual Studio, but everything else should work (and if not, that's something we can take up with the team)

[eobeda]

FOR INSTRUCTIONS: It looks like Visual Studio 2022 (17.14.14) currently only recognizes a single copilot-instructions.md file placed at the root level of .github. I've tested using an instructions folder with multiple files, but VS2022 doesn't seem to support that structure at this time.

If you're trying to modularize or organize your instructions, you might need to consolidate them into the main file copilot-instructions.md for now. Hopefully future updates will expand support for folder-based instruction sets.

[aaronpowell]

That's correct, but it appears to be coming per the September roadmap.

[eobeda]

Excellent news. Thanks for the info.

[eobeda]

Sadly, Visual Studio 2022 (17.14.15) the first "September release" doesn't support separate instruction files. Still only the single main file.

Github copilot says:
Here are the external instructions I have access to for your workspace:

1. Follow Microsoft's C# coding conventions and best practices (as specified in .github/copilot-instructions.md).

Totally skipping the .github/instructions/csharp.instructions.md file that is also available.