How to see which instruction files were automatically added?

[Xan-Kun]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Copilot in GitHub

Body

How can I see exactly which instruction files were attached automatically to a conversation?
In older versions, this was always very clear, but since a few versions back, there seems to be no way to see what actually got injected.
This is quite frustrating and makes any kind of debugging virtually impossible.

Note:

I mean the real, factual, a-posteriori, no guessing, list of files. In the new modal pseudo window that opens for seeing instruction files, it mostly says just "always". which is obviously not true and even misleading.

[AviJxn]

You're not missing anything the current Copilot experience no longer provides a fully transparent, exact list of instruction files that were attached to a conversation.

A few important points:

1. Current limitation
   Right now, the UI only shows a simplified view (like “always”), and there is no built-in way to see the precise, final set of instruction files that were actually injected into a specific conversation.

2. Why this happens
   Copilot dynamically composes context from multiple sources (repository files, configuration, past interactions), and the UI does not expose the full resolved context after processing.

3. What you can do as a workaround

• Manually inspect known instruction sources
  Check files like:

  • .github/copilot-instructions.md
  • repository-level configuration files
  • workspace-specific instruction files

• Reduce ambiguity
  Temporarily remove or isolate instruction files to understand which ones affect behavior.

• Use controlled tests
  Create minimal test scenarios with only one instruction file to verify how it influences responses.

4. Feedback / feature request
   This is a valid usability issue, especially for debugging. You may want to submit this as product feedback so GitHub can expose a full “resolved context” view in the future.

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At the moment, there is no reliable way to retrieve an exact a-posteriori list of injected instruction files from the UI.