Primer — AI Repository Setup

Prime your repositories for AI-assisted development, right from VS Code.

Getting Started

Open the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P) and search for Primer — or click the Primer icon in the Activity Bar to start from the sidebar.

First time? Run Primer: Get Started (or open the walkthrough from the Welcome tab) for a guided 5-step setup.

Features

Analyze Repository

Detect languages, frameworks, package managers, and monorepo structure. Results populate the Analysis tree view in the sidebar.

Primer: Analyze Repository

AI Readiness Assessment

Score your repo across 9 pillars grouped into Repo Health and AI Setup, with maturity levels from Functional (1) to Autonomous (5).

• Interactive HTML report with dark/light theme
• Drill-down into criteria in the Readiness tree view
• Pass/fail icons with evidence for each criterion

Primer: AI Readiness Report

Generate Instructions

Create AI instruction files using the Copilot SDK. Choose your format:

• copilot-instructions.md — GitHub Copilot's native format
• AGENTS.md — Broader agent format at repo root

For monorepos, pick specific areas to generate per-area instruction files with applyTo scoping.

Primer: Generate Copilot Instructions

Generate Configs

Set up MCP servers (.vscode/mcp.json) and VS Code settings (.vscode/settings.json) tuned to your project.

Primer: Generate Configs

Evaluate Instructions

Measure how much your instructions improve AI responses by comparing with/without using a judge model. Results display in an interactive viewer inside VS Code.

Primer: Run Eval · Primer: Scaffold Eval Config

Initialize Repository

One command to analyze, generate instructions, and create configs:

Primer: Initialize Repository

Create Pull Request

Commit Primer-generated files and open a PR directly from VS Code. Supports both GitHub and Azure DevOps repositories — the platform is detected automatically from your git remote.

Primer: Create Pull Request

Sidebar Views

The Primer Activity Bar icon opens two tree views:

Both views show welcome screens with action buttons when no data is loaded yet.

Settings

Requirements

• VS Code 1.100.0+
• GitHub Copilot Chat extension (provides the Copilot CLI)
• Copilot authentication — run copilot → /login in your terminal
• GitHub account — for GitHub PR creation (authenticated via VS Code)
• Microsoft account (optional) — for Azure DevOps PR creation (authenticated via VS Code)

Links

• Primer CLI on GitHub
• Contributing Guide
• License (MIT)