Hello,
Is there a way to make Cursor use .github/copilot-instructions.md file and .github/instructions/and .github/skills/instead of native .cursor/rules/and .cursor/skills/directories? I have Cursor and VS Code installed side-by-side, with Github Copilot plugin in VS Code, and would like to compare the model performance, but would like to avoid writing the rules twice.
Hey, thanks for the request.
Cursor doesn’t support .github/copilot-instructions.md, .github/instructions/, or .github/skills/ as sources for rules or skills. The supported paths are:
Rules: .cursor/rules/ or AGENTS.md in the project root
Skills: .cursor/skills/, .agents/skills/ also .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/ for compatibility
A couple of practical workarounds to avoid writing everything twice:
AGENTS.md in the project root. Cursor picks it up automatically. If GitHub Copilot also supports it, this could be a shared entry point for both tools.
A simple sync script, like a git hook or a small shell script, that copies rules from .github/ to .cursor/ or the other way around. Symlinks would be the obvious solution here, but they’re currently unreliable in Cursor for rules and skills discovery. There are a few known issues around that.
I’d also suggest posting this as a feature request if you’d like native support for .github/ paths. The team does review those.
Let me know if you have any other questions.