Add GitHub Copilot agent for article review and consistency

[Copilot]

GitHub Copilot agent specification for technical article editing with style analysis, grammar checking, markdown validation, and automated reading time calculation.

Implementation

• .github/agents/article-reviewer.md - Agent specification with writing guidelines extracted from 5 existing articles
  • Tone: Professional yet conversational, first-person, present tense for technical content
  • Review objectives: tone/tense consistency, grammar/mechanics, technical accuracy, markdown syntax
  • Editing philosophy: Fix obvious errors, preserve author's voice
  • Reading time: sed -n '/^##/,$p' article.md | wc -w ÷ 200 WPM
  • Markdown conventions clarified: "Links" (not "Emphasis") for external link formatting, "Headers" specifies in-body headings after YAML frontmatter

Usage

@workspace Review src/assets/articles/my-article.md using the article-reviewer agent

The agent validates markdown conventions specific to this blog:

• External links: <a href="..." target="_blank" rel="noopener">
• Blockquotes: > [!NOTE], > [!TIP], > [!WARNING]
• Frontmatter: YAML with minutesToRead calculated from content word count
• Images: Alt text, loading attributes, responsive styling

Reading time calculation excludes frontmatter and uses 200 WPM baseline for semi-technical content with code examples.

Notes

The agent requires only the specification file itself to function. Additional documentation files (README, usage examples) are not necessary for GitHub Copilot to use the agent.

Original prompt

Analyze my writing style, tone, intended audience (software engineers), etc. I want to configure Github Copilot for reviewing my articles. Create either a skill or agent spec for this. The objectives are:

1. make sure tone and tense are consistent
2. fix typos, grammatical issues, run-on sentences, akward sentence structure, punctuation issues, etc.
3. perform simple fact-checking
4. ensure markdown syntax is correct

The intended review/edits should fix these simple mistakes (typos, grammar, etc.) but is NOT intended to do large-scale rewrites. The editing should be a "light touch". At the end of each review session, use wc to get the word count, then divide it by a typical WPM for reading semi-technical content to get the amount of minutes it should take to read the article. This is shown at the top of each article; adjust if needed

The user has attached the following file paths as relevant context:

• src/assets/articles/databaseInternals.md
• src/assets/articles/databaseInternalsChapter2.md
• src/assets/articles/databaseInternalsChapter3.md
• src/assets/articles/githubPages404ReactRouter.md
• src/assets/articles/ReactConf2025.md

Created from VS Code.

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💡 You can make Copilot smarter by setting up custom instructions, customizing its development environment and configuring Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. Learn more Copilot coding agent tips in the docs.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR introduces a GitHub Copilot “article-reviewer” agent spec and companion docs to standardize how technical blog articles in src/assets/articles/ are reviewed for style consistency, markdown correctness, and reading-time calculation.

Changes:

• Added a dedicated agent specification for light-touch technical article editing and validation.
• Documented how to use the agent with practical, copy/pasteable scenarios.
• Added an agents directory README describing available agents and recommended workflows.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

File	Description
.github/agents/article-reviewer.md	Defines the article review agent’s style guide, checklists, and reading-time calculation procedure.
.github/agents/USAGE_EXAMPLES.md	Provides concrete prompts and expected outputs for using the agent in day-to-day writing/editing.
.github/agents/README.md	Documents the agents directory and summarizes what the article-reviewer agent does/doesn’t do.

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[noahtigner]

@copilot Are the ./github/agents/README.md and ./github/agents/USAGE_EXAMPLES.md actually necessary? Are they helpful for the agents? I will not need them. If not, remove them both

[Copilot]

@copilot Are the ./github/agents/README.md and ./github/agents/USAGE_EXAMPLES.md actually necessary? Are they helpful for the agents? I will not need them. If not, remove them both

Removed both README.md and USAGE_EXAMPLES.md in ae60c14. These files were documentation for humans, not necessary for the agent to function. The article-reviewer.md agent spec contains all the guidance needed for GitHub Copilot.

[noahtigner]

@copilot review this article