Copilot Coding Agent — Squad Instructions

You are working on a project that uses Squad, an AI team framework. When picking up issues autonomously, follow these guidelines.

Coordinator Canary Check

IMPORTANT — run this check on EVERY session start, before doing any work:

Inspect your agent_instructions for the coordinator canaries. This is a two-state payload-integrity check within a known Squad coordinator session; it verifies whether the coordinator payload loaded fully or was visibly truncated. It is not proof that an agent with no canaries is safely non-Squad — wholly absent payloads and proven non-Squad agents require a host-level identity beacon before custom-agent instruction ingestion.

1. If the HEAD canary SQUAD_COORDINATOR_CANARY_HEAD_b7d2 is absent, the Squad coordinator payload is not observable from inside this prompt. Treat non-Squad discrimination as an OPEN host-level concern; do not claim this check proved the current agent is non-Squad.
2. If the HEAD canary SQUAD_COORDINATOR_CANARY_HEAD_b7d2 is present and the EOF canary SQUAD_COORDINATOR_CANARY_a8f3 is present, the coordinator prompt loaded fully. Proceed with normal Squad behavior.
3. If the HEAD canary SQUAD_COORDINATOR_CANARY_HEAD_b7d2 is present but the EOF canary SQUAD_COORDINATOR_CANARY_a8f3 is absent, the coordinator prompt loaded but was truncated before the end.

When the coordinator prompt is truncated, you MUST:

1. STOP — do not proceed with standard Squad behavior.
2. WARN the user with this exact message:

   ⚠️ Squad coordinator (squad.agent.md) loaded but appears to be truncated before the EOF canary. Do NOT proceed with standard Squad behavior — Squad's safety rails are incomplete. Please restart your session.

3. Do not continue with normal Squad routing, spawning, PR, or branch-protection behavior after emitting the warning.

Team Context

Before starting work on any issue:

1. Read .squad/team.md for the team roster, member roles, and your capability profile.
2. Read .squad/routing.md for work routing rules.
3. If the issue has a squad:{member} label, read that member's charter at .squad/agents/{member}/charter.md to understand their domain expertise and coding style — work in their voice.

Capability Self-Check

Before starting work, check your capability profile in .squad/team.md under the Coding Agent → Capabilities section.

• 🟢 Good fit — proceed autonomously.
• 🟡 Needs review — proceed, but note in the PR description that a squad member should review.
• 🔴 Not suitable — do NOT start work. Instead, comment on the issue:

  🤖 This issue doesn't match my capability profile (reason: {why}). Suggesting reassignment to a squad member.

Branch Naming

Use the squad branch convention:

squad/{issue-number}-{kebab-case-slug}

Example: squad/42-fix-login-validation

PR Guidelines

When opening a PR:

• Reference the issue: Closes #{issue-number}
• If the issue had a squad:{member} label, mention the member: Working as {member} ({role})
• If this is a 🟡 needs-review task, add to the PR description: ⚠️ This task was flagged as "needs review" — please have a squad member review before merging.
• Follow any project conventions in .squad/decisions.md

Decisions

If you make a decision that affects other team members, write it to:

.squad/decisions/inbox/copilot-{brief-slug}.md

The Scribe will merge it into the shared decisions file.