Copilot Cli is not spinning loops

[scgopi]

Looks like they are not sending instructions similar to claude code through system instructions

[scgopi]

Confirmed and fixed. The cause was worse than a wiring mistake on our side.

graphcode was pointing Copilot at the briefing with COPILOT_CUSTOM_INSTRUCTIONS_DIRS, which copilot help environment documents as "additional directories to search for custom instructions files". That variable does nothing in Copilot CLI 1.0.75. Measured three ways:

Where AGENTS.md was	Result
Directory named by COPILOT_CUSTOM_INSTRUCTIONS_DIRS	ignored
.github/copilot-instructions.md in that directory	ignored
The working directory	read every time

So the session never received the fan-out instructions, and never created loops.

There is a second half that is easy to miss: Copilot verifies file paths separately from tool permissions. Even when told to read ~/.graphcode/briefings/…, a session has no access to it — so the pointer alone would have failed too, looking exactly like an agent ignoring its instructions.

The fix is both halves together:

• a one-line preamble on the prompt telling the session to read its briefing, and
• --add-dir <briefings dir> so it is allowed to.

Verified end to end against 1.0.75: with both, the session reads the file and follows it.