Default to using README.md instead of copilot-instructions.md

[bbarke]

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Copilot Feature Area

JetBrains & Xcode

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I work in an environment were we have a ton of projects. A lot of them have decent README.md files. For chat/agent mode, can we default (or have the option to default) copilot to reading those files? I know I can manually add the file as context for the chat session, but being able to default it would give a more seamless experience.

I understand that the README.md file is for humans, and copilot-instructions is for AI - but there is often duplicate information in both of them. Over time, the details of each drifts, even becoming contradicting, and it creates a maintenance headache and quite a bit of technical debt maintaining these two sources of truth over all of our projects.

[bbarke]

Thanks for the ideas! I think I'll submit a feature request.

I'll look at writing a small plugin for this feature - maybe that can help short term. I'm not sure how I'd intercept copilot interactions with a separate plugin, but maybe there is a good way to do that. I'll do some digging.

A script may work but also be quite unwieldy to implement over the hundreds of engineers who would need to run it. If it was a one-off script that ran against each project, and then checked in that resulting file, we'd run into the same problem of duplication and drift. I like the plugin idea a bit better from this standpoint - unless I'm not understanding correctly?

I understand the best practice from copilot is to have two separate files, but in our environment, it is quite unwieldy to properly maintain the two without some drift and even introducing contradiction ideas.

Thanks for the input and ideas!

[wanbs14]

Currently, Copilot doesn’t natively default to using README.md instead of copilot-instructions.md. By design, copilot-instructions.md is treated as the primary AI-specific source of truth, while README.md is considered human-facing documentation. That said, there are some practical approaches if you want Copilot to prioritize README.md content:

Manually include README.md in each session: You can add the file to the chat context when starting a session. This works but isn’t automated.

Automation or wrapper scripts: You could implement a small wrapper or plugin for your IDE that automatically prepends the README.md content to every Copilot chat session. This effectively simulates a “default” behavior without modifying GitHub’s built-in handling.

Merge or align content: If possible, consolidate the key instructions into the README.md so it contains all relevant information for both humans and AI. Then, your automation can feed the same source to Copilot, reducing the need to maintain both files.

In short, there’s no built-in setting to default Copilot to README.md, but with tooling or workflow adjustments, you can achieve the effect you’re looking for—using README.md as the primary context while minimizing duplication and drift.