AtriumA disposable installer for GitHub Copilot context. Walks you through populating .github/copilot-instructions.md with your team and personal context, then gets out of the way. Installation Launch VS Code Quick Open ( Ctrl+P), paste the following command, and press enter.Copied to clipboard |
AtriumA disposable installer for GitHub Copilot context. Atrium walks you through populating How it works
What ships in
|
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
WELCOME.md |
The 3-step checklist (about-me → assistant folder → permissions+anchor) plus a footer of recommended extras. |
about-me.md |
Step 1 instructions for Copilot — collect name and role, write to copilot-instructions.md. |
assistant.md |
Step 2 instructions for Copilot — scaffold a durable assistant/ folder (Copilot's own working directory) in the workspace root with TODO.md, about-user.md, and about-assistant.md, then point copilot-instructions.md at them. |
permissions.md |
Step 3 instructions for Copilot — collect the Context Brain path, register it as an anchor in .vscode/settings.json, and record ## Context Brain, ## Permissions, ## Anchors, and ## File references sections in copilot-instructions.md. |
The folder is scratch. Atrium tops up missing canonical files on activation; existing files are left alone so checklist progress survives.
Rendered files
Atrium registers itself as the default editor for .html and .md:
- Markdown is converted to styled HTML — headings, lists, code blocks, tables, task lists, blockquotes, links, images.
- Full HTML documents (anything with
<!DOCTYPE>or<html>) render inside a sandboxed iframe with relative URLs rewritten to webview URIs, so images, stylesheets, and inline scripts work the way they do in a browser. - HTML fragments render inline against the file's directory as the base.
- Both live-reload when the file is saved on disk.
To edit a file as source, right-click in the Explorer → Open With… → Text Editor. To make text the default for a specific file type, use workbench.editorAssociations in your settings.
Anchors
An anchor is a named folder Copilot considers part of your working context. You can have many; one is active at a time. Ask Copilot in chat to manage them:
- "Mount
~/Notesas an anchor called Notes." - "Switch to the Work anchor."
- "Remove the chippy anchor."
The anchor protocol is documented inside .github/copilot-instructions.md after Step 3 runs, so future Copilot sessions know how to add, rename, reorder, and remove anchors on request.
Copilot Chat links
After Step 3, Copilot ends every response that creates or edits an .html or .md file with a link of the form:
[label](vscode://vegadevshop.atrium/open?file=<urlencoded-absolute-path>)
Clicking the link opens the file directly in Atrium's renderer — no Explorer hunt, no source tab. The URI handler is registered by the extension; uninstall Atrium and the links degrade to plain "file not found" rather than misbehaving.
Configuration
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
atrium.folder |
atrium-extension |
Path to the scaffold folder, relative to workspace root. |
atrium.anchors |
[] |
Array of { label, path } entries — folders Copilot can reference as context. Managed by Copilot via the protocol in copilot-instructions.md. |
atrium.activeAnchor |
"" |
Label of the currently-active anchor. |
Why disposable?
Most Copilot tooling tries to inject runtime behavior — chat participants, custom agents, opinionated services. That couples your Copilot experience to whatever extension you happened to install. Atrium goes the other way: the durable artifact is plain markdown that Copilot reads natively, plus a thin VS Code renderer so the docs Copilot writes feel like pages instead of source files. Uninstall Atrium and your Copilot workflow keeps working — you just lose the rendered preview.
License
MIT