Add Env Setup to Copilot Instructions

[JennyPng]

Azure/azure-sdk-tools#12592

• Adding instructions on using new Verify Setup MCP tool, which checks that requirements are installed in the environment
• We want this check to be proactive and happen without explicit invokation. However, currently, Copilot would only remember if the tool is run in the current session, not in newer sessions, so the user would likely run verify setup in each new session due to a lack of a caching. This will be accepted for Scenario 1 and improved in future iterations

Example of implicitly running this tool before running a different requested tool

Explicit invokation

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR adds a new prerequisite instruction to the Copilot instructions file that directs Copilot to run the azsdk_verify_setup tool before executing other MCP tools to verify the user's development environment setup.

Key changes:

• Added a new prerequisite bullet point instructing Copilot to always run the azsdk_verify_setup tool before other tools
• Positioned this instruction at the top of the Prerequisites section for visibility

[m-redding]

This lgtm

[m-redding]

I think you'll have to use an absolute link to pass the pipeline

[JennyPng]

The LLM seems to perform better with the relative link than if I linked to a web page, and I noticed some repos are currently using relative links 🤔 (example from rest-api-specs with check package readiness https://github.com/Azure/azure-rest-api-specs/blob/main/.github/copilot-instructions.md#release-readiness-of-sdk-and-information-about-the-release-pipeline )

[m-redding]

Ohh that's interesting, but that does make sense to me since copilot likes when things are available in the same workspace. It looks like the verify links is an eng/common check. I'm not totally sure where the requirement comes from, but maybe we could revisit

[maririos]

@weshaggard for feedback on the link check.
I have seen in some repos the CI fails and in some it doesn't.

FYI the check is in place because our guidelines say that we should always use absolute paths

[weshaggard]

Yes our link checker ensures links are absolute because most of them get published to docs sites outside of our repo.

However for instructions @jeo02 found a workaround which is to use a link like #file:../eng/common/instructions/azsdk-tools/verify-setup-instructions.md as our link checker sees that as a anchor link but it appears to still be resolved correctly by the LLM.

[JennyPng]

I tried this out, it looks like adding the #file has the same effect of using an absolute path where the LLM doesn't read it for me? (Copilot will say 1 reference used instead of 2 including the verify-setup-instructions)

vs.

[weshaggard]

That is interesting. According to copilot chat it doesn't look at any links only open files.

[jeo02]

#file:path would only work if the file your trying to refer is in the same directory which is not the case here unfortunately. I believe in the copilot instructions in rest-api-specs we still use the relative path to refer to instructions under common/instructions.

GitHub links are hit or miss as it is up to copilot to follow it in the moment whereas relative links will add the whole file referenced to the end of the copilot instructions. (You can see this in the Copilot Logs)

[weshaggard]

Ok if we need to use relative links in these MD files we can either override the link checking or opt-out these instructions from link checking.

[weshaggard]

I've got PR Azure/azure-sdk-tools#12863 which will disable these link guidelines for instruction files. For now, we can by-pass this check and merge this PR.