Constitution vs Agent context file (eg: copilot-instructions.md)

[nvcnvn]

Hi, so the question is: should I just duplicated them?
Any guideline on what should be in the Constitution and what should be in the copilot-instructions? Seem for me they both loaded into every prompt anw.

[anchildress1]

When you install the Spec Kit prompts, each one come with a built-in reference to the constitution.md file. So as long as your using one of those prompts, you'd only need the constitution.md. Outside of that, you'd probably want to direct your agent to that constitution file explicitly. Since you mentioned copilot, what I would do for anything outside of VS Code or Visual Studio (since both of those you can configure via settings to use the constitution directly instead) is to set up copilot-instructions.md with a simple one-liner pointing to the constitution as a markdown link. Then any time copilot would pick up instructions, it automatically loads the constitution file. Then maintain your constitution as the sole source of instructions.

Hope this helps! 😁