Why caveman installer does not deploy $HOME/.copilot/copilot-instructions.md?

[mloskot]

Let's consider npx -y github:JuliusBrussee/caveman -- --only copilot --with-init executed inside $HOME.

It looks like the installer creates a repository-local instructions in $HOME/.github/copilot-instructions.md - treats $HOME as it was a Git repository.

Questions:

• How to tell the installer to deploy the user-global GitHub Copilot CLI instructions in $HOME/.copilot/copilot-instructions.md ?
• If that is not supported, then why?

I've seen that users who do not want repo-wide Caveman instructions, but user-wide, they manually copy $HOME/.github/copilot-instructions.md to $HOME/.copilot/copilot-instructions.md which then is recognised by the GitHub Copilot CLI:

Interestingly, it looks like the current focused Copilot-native candidate developed in this PR does not deploy the $HOME/.copilot/copilot-instructions.mdeither:

• feat(copilot-cli): add always-on hook support #553

[CaptainAni187]

Right now the installer can't do that. --with-init only writes per-repo rule files into the directory you run it from, and the Copilot target is hardcoded as .github/copilot-instructions.md in src/tools/caveman-init.js. So when you run it from $HOME, it treats $HOME like a repo and writes $HOME/.github/copilot-instructions.md. The only global target init knows about is OpenClaw (~/.openclaw/workspace). There is no entry for ~/.copilot/.

As for why, I couldn't find anything in the code or docs saying it was ruled out on purpose. INSTALL.md describes --with-init as per-repo, and the Copilot row in the agent table says "Repo-wide instructions via --with-init". The PR you linked (#553) was closed without adding it.

Until it's supported, the manual option from INSTALL.md works for the global file too. You just point it at ~/.copilot/ instead:

mkdir -p ~/.copilot
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/main/src/rules/caveman-activate.md >> ~/.copilot/copilot-instructions.md

I used >> because the installer also appends to the Copilot file instead of replacing it, so any instructions you already have stay. If you already ran the installer from $HOME, you can delete $HOME/.github/copilot-instructions.md, or the whole $HOME/.github folder if that's the only file in it.

[mloskot]

Thanks for your input with in-depth analysis of current inner workings. However, I don't think it offers any revelations.

It just boils down to the equivalent of this, after Caveman installer was executed in $HOME directory:
cp $HOME/.github/copilot-instructions.md >> $HOME/.copilot/copilot-instructions.md

Let's wait for the propery "always-on Copilot CLI support" coming in Caveman 3.2.0 as per

• feat(copilot-cli): add always-on hook support #553 (comment)