Add 'Investigating PRs and CI failures' guidance to copilot-instructions#54609
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dsplaisted merged 2 commits intoJun 5, 2026
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When asked to look at or diagnose a PR/build, the agent should first read the PR itself — state, checks, and the conversation/comments — before deep analysis, since maintainers often post the root cause or decided fix in the discussion and a linked PR/issue may already carry it. When checks are failing, prefer the repo's ci-analysis skill over ad-hoc investigation. Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
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Pull request overview
This PR updates the repository’s .github/copilot-instructions.md to add guidance for how agents should approach PR/build investigations, emphasizing reading the PR discussion first and (when applicable) routing CI-failure deep dives to a specialized skill rather than ad-hoc analysis.
Changes:
- Add a new “Investigating PRs and CI failures” section with two bullets: read PR state/checks/discussion first, and prefer a CI-analysis skill for failing checks.
- Keep the instructions file’s existing “Section title + bullets” structure and placement (inserted between Testing and Output Considerations).
lbussell
reviewed
Jun 5, 2026
Co-authored-by: Logan Bussell <loganbussell@microsoft.com>
lbussell
approved these changes
Jun 5, 2026
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What
Adds a short Investigating PRs and CI failures section to
.github/copilot-instructions.md:Why
When asked to "look at" a PR, the agent tends to jump straight into ad-hoc investigation and skips the PR discussion — where the answer often already is. Concrete example: diagnosing #54484 (a
release/10.0.1xx → 10.0.3xxauto-merge failing Restore with'[]' is not a valid version string), the discussion already had the maintainer's root cause and the decided resolution (wait for the 10.0.9 servicing build to flow through the VMR, then pin the reference), and pointed at the linked PR that added the component. Reading the PR + conversation first would have landed on the right answer immediately.The repo already ships a
ci-analysisskill built for exactly this, but a generic prompt like "Look at the issue with #54484" doesn't match its CI-failure trigger phrases, so it isn't auto-selected. This guidance routes failing-CI investigations to it.Why this shape
ci-analysison code-review/explain requests.