stale-row: github-copilot-custom-instructions--gh-copilot-customizing-copilot (abandoned, 1460d since last commit)

[github-actions]

This catalog is a museum, not an active-only registry. An
abandoned 2018 project is just as valid a catalog entry as a
live 2026 one — the longitudinal record is the value. This row
hasn't been classified yet: the ask is to fill in its
decay_cause, NOT to remove the row.

Row id: github-copilot-custom-instructions--gh-copilot-customizing-copilot
Name: GitHub Copilot custom instructions
Repo: https://github.com/copilot/customizing-copilot
Last commit: unknown
Days since last commit: 1460
Severity: abandoned (per MAINTAINER.md §2 freshness SLA)
Detection signal: repo-not-found (404 from GitHub API)

Opened automatically by the weekly staleness check
(.github/workflows/staleness.yml, issue #38). The detection
windows are stale = 12-24 months quiet, abandoned = 24+
months quiet. That signal is mechanical — it tells us the row
went quiet, not why. The decay_cause field (see
docs/SCHEMA.md §3c) is where the why lives.

Pick a decay-cause

One of the eight enum values:

• acquired — bought by another vendor.
• pivoted — team moved to a different product.
• unfunded — funding ran out, no acquisition.
• lost-benchmark-race — outpaced by a better system in the same niche.
• superseded — academic paper replaced by a follow-up paper by the same / overlapping authors.
• research-complete — academic paper with no maintained codebase intended (one-shot research artefact).
• archived — GitHub repo has archived: true set.
• unknown — researched but no clear cause found.

Evidence

Provide a URL (resolvable http(s):// — TechCrunch / Crunchbase
/ founder blog post / GitHub repo / S2 follow-up paper / etc.)
or an [unverifiable] <free-text> string describing what
you searched. Example:
[unverifiable] researched: techcrunch, vbeat, hn algolia, wayback; no clear cause found.

Applying the classification

1. Open data/landscape.json and find the record with
   id == "github-copilot-custom-instructions--gh-copilot-customizing-copilot".
2. Set the three record-level fields:
   • decay_cause — one of the eight values above.
   • decay_date — ISO YYYY-MM-DD (best estimate of when
     the project went quiet; the last-commit date is a fine
     default if you don't have something better).
   • decay_evidence — URL or [unverifiable] … string.
3. Run make build to refresh edges + re-render landscape.html.
4. Run make validate to confirm the row passes gate 5
   (decay-field enum + format checks).
5. Commit (data/landscape.json + landscape.html) and close
   this issue.

The row stays in the catalog regardless of decay-cause — we
want the historical entry. Auto-reopen is not implemented; if
upstream resumes activity, this issue stays open until a
maintainer closes it manually.

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Generated by scripts/check_staleness.py on 2026-08-25T12:10:19Z.