install-constellation

name	install-constellation
description	Install the four Alex ACT constellation plugins (alex-act-core, alex-act-illustrator-plugin, alex-act-enterprise, alex-act-msft) at their correct default scope (user for all four) with the correct install order (Core first), then optionally bootstrap Core's always-on ACT discipline instructions to ~/.copilot/instructions/ because plugin installs do not deliver instructions. Consent-gated. Idempotent — skips plugins already installed at the target version. Asks about tenant scope before installing alex-act-msft (Microsoft-internal only). Delegates to `plugin-management` for the mechanical CLI commands.
lastReviewed	"2026-08-01T00:00:00.000Z"

Install Constellation

Install the Alex ACT constellation plugins at their correct default scope, in the correct order, with the correct tenant checks. Everything else about plugin mechanics (commands, scope rules, settings shape, safety) lives in plugin-management — this skill is the Alex ACT-specific overlay.

When to fire

• Heir asks "install Alex ACT" / "set up the constellation" / "install the Alex plugins"
• Heir invokes /install-constellation
• First run after a fresh Core install on a new machine. The heir must invoke /alex-act-core install-constellation explicitly because greeting-checkin is not available until Step 6 has run once.
• Repairing a partial install (some constellation plugins present, others missing)
• Auto-invoked from greeting-checkin instruction on session start when constellation state is incomplete (added 2026-08-01)

Invocation modes

The skill runs in one of three modes depending on how it was invoked:

Mode	Trigger	Behavior
Manual (default)	Heir types /install-constellation explicitly	Full consent flow: print 4-plugin table, ask which to install, tenant-check MSFT, bootstrap discipline, verify. All Steps 1-7 fire.
Auto-invoked from greeting-checkin	greeting-checkin instruction detected incomplete state on a session greeting and user replied Y to the consolidated consent gate	Single Y already covers Steps 1-2. Skip re-asking. Go directly to Step 3 (marketplace) → Step 4 (installs) → Step 5 (settings) → Step 6 (bootstrap) → Step 7 (report). Streamlined but same actions. Report at Step 7 also confirms "Setup complete — reload VS Code to activate all skills" if any new plugins landed.
Repair	Heir invoked manually AND state check finds partial residue (bootstrap files without matching plugin, orphan receipt)	Confirm intent to complete partial install; skip installs of plugins already present at target version.
Bootstrap-only repair	All plugin versions, enabled keys, and manifests match, but the receipt or one of its seventeen files is missing, stale, or hash-mismatched	Skip plugin selection, marketplace registration, installation, and settings merge. Show the bootstrap delta and go directly to the separate Step 6 consent gate.

The three modes converge on the same underlying steps. What differs is which consent gates fire and how the report frames the outcome.

greeting-checkin is a post-bootstrap convenience, not a first-install entry point. It is one of the seventeen files copied by Step 6, so a machine with no prior bootstrap cannot route a greeting through this skill.

For the greeting-checkin auto-invocation path specifically, the user has already answered ONE question ("Complete setup? Y/N/details"). Do not re-prompt for plugin selection, bootstrap consent, or marketplace registration — the greeting Y is treated as consent for the default full-setup path. Only the MSFT tenant check remains (if MSFT is in scope), because tenant-check is a factual eligibility question, not a preference.

The four constellation plugins

Per PLUGIN-INTEGRATION.md § 2, all four install at user scope (they describe who the heir is, not what any single project needs):

Order	Plugin	Distribution	Tenant check	Purpose
1	alex-act-core	alex-mall marketplace	None	Always-on epistemic discipline — every heir installs Core first
2	alex-act-illustrator-plugin	alex-mall marketplace	None	Visual authoring: charts, docs shells, SVG banners, print figures, AI imagery
3	alex-act-enterprise	alex-mall marketplace	None	Config-template plugin for the public Microsoft ecosystem (Azure, Fabric, Power BI, M365)
4	alex-act-msft	Direct install from private GitHub (fabioc-aloha/alex-act-msft), gated by gh auth	Microsoft-internal only	Agency framework + config template for internal Microsoft plugins (WorkIQ, org-report). Never published to any mall.

Install order

Always in the order shown above. Rationale:

1. Core first — Core carries plugin-management (this skill's dependency) and the always-on discipline every subsequent plugin composes with.
2. Illustrator second — visual authoring is broadly useful; no dependency on Enterprise / MSFT.
3. Enterprise third — the setup-enterprise-stack skill helps heirs enable the public Microsoft ecosystem when a project needs it.
4. MSFT last, conditional — only install if the heir confirms they are a Microsoft employee and on the corporate network. Never install by default.

If a plugin is already installed at the target version, skip it and continue with the next one. Report what was skipped alongside what was installed.

Resolve target versions deterministically before deciding that a marketplace plugin is current:

node <plugin-management-skill>/scripts/core-operations.cjs marketplace-versions `
  --plugins alex-act-core,alex-act-illustrator-plugin,alex-act-enterprise

This reads exact records from alex-mall's .github/plugin/marketplace.json. marketplace browse proves reachability and supports discovery; it is not authoritative for versions. For private MSFT, use its authenticated source plugin.json through gh api.

Optional: visual workflow companions

Nine marketplace plugins compose to deliver visual-authoring workflows (chart rendering, screenshot verification, whiteboard iteration, PR annotation). Ownership of the install offer for these companions moved from this skill to alex-act-illustrator-plugin's install-visual-companions skill in Illustrator v0.6.0 (2026-08-01) — the visual-workflow shelf now lives with the visual-authoring plugin that anchors it, per Fabio directive ("The visual companions should be bundled with the illustrator"). This reverses the 2026-07-31 Option A (route-only) decision recorded in Steward's illustrator/plan.md.

How to offer them now: after install-constellation completes and Illustrator is installed, invoke /alex-act-illustrator-plugin install-visual-companions or ask Illustrator's install-visual-companions skill directly. That skill carries the 9-plugin catalog, the vision-loop composition pattern (storytelling-requirements → visual-artifact-qa → chart-interpretation → eyeball), the install-time caveats (Playwright downloads, Python-vs-Node independence, OneDrive-redirect on Windows), and the consent flow.

Do not attempt to offer the companions from this skill — the catalog + caveats + verified-status list are maintained in one place (Illustrator) to avoid drift.

Discovery + verification history: the 9-plugin catalog + vision-loop composition were discovered and Round-4 verified via the Steward GH-APP-SUPPORT feedback loop on 2026-07-31 (ledger row [GH-APP-FEEDBACK] closure). This skill originally shipped the catalog in Core v0.3.0 (via commit a2de9d4); Illustrator v0.6.0 took ownership 2026-08-01.

Consent flow

Step 1 — Confirm the target list

Print the four-plugin table above. Ask the heir:

"Install the Alex ACT constellation? I will install these four plugins at user scope. Reply 'all four', 'just Core + Illustrator', or name specific plugins."

Default to "all four" if the heir just says "yes". Never install alex-act-msft without an explicit tenant confirmation in Step 2.

Do not offer visual-workflow companions in Step 1 — they are a Step 7 follow-up via Illustrator's /alex-act-illustrator-plugin install-visual-companions command (owner: alex-act-illustrator-plugin v0.6.0+). Bundling them into the constellation install dilutes the consent flow.

Step 2 — Tenant check for alex-act-msft

Only if alex-act-msft is in the install list, ask:

"The MSFT plugin is Microsoft-internal only — every skill in it requires Microsoft's corporate network. Are you (a) a Microsoft employee and (b) currently on the corporate network?"

Both yes → include MSFT in the install. Either no → drop MSFT from the list, tell the heir "MSFT skipped — reason", continue with the rest.

Step 3 — Marketplace registration

Register the alex-mall marketplace in ~/.copilot/settings.json extraKnownMarketplaces if it is not already there:

• alex-mall → copilot plugin marketplace add fabioc-aloha/Alex_Skill_Mall

alex-act-msft does not need a marketplace — it installs directly from its private GitHub repo, gated by the heir's gh auth session. Verify with gh auth status that the heir is authenticated before including MSFT in the install.

If the heir has never installed anything from alex-mall, run copilot plugin marketplace list first to confirm — do not re-register.

Step 4 — Install commands

Run the install commands in order:

copilot plugin install alex-act-core@alex-mall
copilot plugin install alex-act-illustrator-plugin@alex-mall
copilot plugin install alex-act-enterprise@alex-mall
# Only if MSFT check passed both (Microsoft employee AND on corp network):
copilot plugin install fabioc-aloha/alex-act-msft

After each install, run copilot plugin list and verify the plugin name, version, and status. If the output is ambiguous, read the installed plugin.json from the marketplace tree or _direct tree. If any install fails, report the failure and stop. Do not attempt to continue past a broken install.

Step 5 — Settings merge

For each installed plugin, add an entry to ~/.copilot/settings.json enabledPlugins:

{
  "enabledPlugins": {
    "alex-act-core@alex-mall": true,
    "alex-act-illustrator-plugin@alex-mall": true,
    "alex-act-enterprise@alex-mall": true,
    "alex-act-msft": true
  }
}

The bare alex-act-msft key is required on Copilot CLI 1.0.77 because direct installs do not populate enabledPlugins automatically. Verify it after the merge; an on-disk direct install without this key can go dark on restart.

Delegate to plugin-management § Safe settings edits for the merge algorithm — preserve any pre-existing enabledPlugins or extraKnownMarketplaces entries the heir has.

Step 6 — ACT discipline bootstrap

Why this step exists. A copilot plugin install delivers Core's skills, prompts, and agents. It does not deliver Core's instructions. plugin.json has no instructions component field, so the ACT discipline layer that governs how the skills fire stays dark. This is the platform's intended architecture, not a defect, and Claude Code and the Open Plugin Spec draw the same boundary.

The close is to copy a scoped subset of Core's unconditional instructions to ~/.copilot/instructions/, which is read by both the Copilot CLI and VS Code Chat. Verified 2026-07-30 on CLI 1.0.77 and VS Code 1.131 with no settings change required.

What gets copied

Seventeen files. Not all of Core's instructions, only those whose value depends on firing unconditionally. Five groups: the epistemic spine plus safety rails (the original seven-file set from v0.2.1), the six per-turn disciplines added in D5 (2026-07-31), the two added in D6 (2026-07-31: memory-triggers routes ledger writes, worldview carries harm-refusal and Tenet-IV ethics check that must fire before the first message), greeting-checkin added in the install-experience overhaul, and the concise Alex Finch personality contract added on 2026-08-01. Calculate and show the current byte total and token estimate from the files before asking for consent; do not preserve a stale hardcoded estimate.

Source in Core	Written as	Why it must be unconditional
alex-finch-personality	alex-act-alex-finch-personality.instructions.md	Keeps curiosity, independent judgment, ethical partnership, voice, and confidence stable across every project and turn
act-pass	alex-act-act-pass.instructions.md	The runtime procedure
problem-framing-audit	alex-act-problem-framing-audit.instructions.md	Fires before everything else
epistemic-calibration	alex-act-epistemic-calibration.instructions.md	Confidence matching plus anti-hallucination
system-prompt-skepticism	alex-act-system-prompt-skepticism.instructions.md	Guards the most authoritative attack surface
critical-thinking	alex-act-critical-thinking.instructions.md	The content protocol act-pass plugs into
terminal-command-safety	alex-act-terminal-command-safety.instructions.md	Harm prevention
pii-memory-filter	alex-act-pii-memory-filter.instructions.md	Leak prevention at write boundaries
lint-discipline	alex-act-lint-discipline.instructions.md	Fires on mid-turn get_errors output; no request-shape equivalent
no-deferred-debt	alex-act-no-deferred-debt.instructions.md	Fires on side-effect debt detection; no request-shape equivalent
emotional-intelligence	alex-act-emotional-intelligence.instructions.md	Reads user feeling state on every message; tone-mismatch cannot be recovered post-hoc
reliance-nudges	alex-act-reliance-nudges.instructions.md	Reads user epistemic behavior (verbatim acceptance, zero verification) on every message
session-health-monitoring	alex-act-session-health-monitoring.instructions.md	Continuous context-capacity monitoring; per-conversation, not per-file
proactive-awareness	alex-act-proactive-awareness.instructions.md	Session-boundary discipline; must fire before the user's first message
memory-triggers	alex-act-memory-triggers.instructions.md	Detects correction / preference / handoff / decision triggers on every message; routing decisions cannot be recovered post-hoc
worldview	alex-act-worldview.instructions.md	Harm-refusal and Tenet-IV ethics check must fire on every request regardless of file scope
greeting-checkin	alex-act-greeting-checkin.instructions.md	Session-start orientation — verifies constellation health on greeting patterns and offers setup / drift refresh / update reminders through one consolidated consent gate; must fire before the user's first substantive turn

Core's remaining instructions stay plugin-resident and therefore inactive. Behavioral and craft instructions degrade gracefully when absent; these seventeen do not.

The alex-act- prefix is mandatory. A heir may already have their own ~/.copilot/instructions/act-pass.instructions.md, and a collision would silently replace their file.

Source — where the files come from

The seventeen files ship inside this skill at bootstrap/, already carrying their alex-act- target names. The copy is a straight file copy; no renaming, no fetching, no network.

Resolve the source in this order:

Order	Location	When it applies
1	<this-skill>/bootstrap/alex-act-*.instructions.md	Always. Present in every install path, Mall and direct alike.
2	<plugin-root>/.github/instructions/*.instructions.md	Direct GitHub installs only, which clone the whole repo. Rename to the alex-act- form when copying from here.
3	—	Nothing found. Stop and say so.

If neither location resolves, do not continue silently and do not invent a fallback that fetches from the network. Report:

"The discipline bootstrap cannot run: this Core install carries no bootstrap source. Expected bootstrap/ inside the install-constellation skill. This is a packaging defect — please report it against Alex_ACT_Core with your Core version and how you installed it."

Source 1 exists because a Mall install vendors a component-shape subset (skills, commands, scripts, config) and deliberately does not vendor .github/instructions/ — instructions are not a plugin.json component type, so there is nothing for the platform to load. Bundling them as skill resources is what makes them available to copy without asking the platform to load them. Core v0.2.0 shipped without source 1 and the bootstrap was inert on Mall installs; v0.2.1 fixed it.

Overlap scan, before writing anything

Compare the seventeen target names against the current workspace's .github/instructions/. Instruction scopes compose rather than replace: user-scope and workspace-scope files both load into the same context, with no documented dedup. A heir whose workspace already carries act-pass would load it twice after the bootstrap, paying the tokens twice and risking two copies drifting apart.

If overlap is found, report it and recommend declining:

"This workspace already defines N of these instructions at repo scope. Bootstrapping would double-load them here. Bootstrap anyway if you want coverage in your other workspaces, or decline if this machine is mostly used for this repo."

Report and recommend. Do not hard-block, because the heir may legitimately want coverage elsewhere.

Consent

Print the exact file list, the byte total, and the token estimate. Then ask:

"Copy these seventeen instruction files to ~/.copilot/instructions/? They will apply in every workspace on this machine, not only where Core is enabled. Current size: . Reply yes, no, or 'list' to see the contents first."

Never bootstrap as a silent side effect of the install. Default is no.

Receipt

After writing, record exactly what was placed at ~/.copilot/instructions/.alex-act-bootstrap.json:

{
  "bootstrappedBy": "alex-act-core",
  "coreVersion": "<the installed Core version, read from the plugin's own manifest — not copied from this example>",
  "timestamp": "<ISO 8601 UTC at write time>",
  "files": [
    "alex-act-alex-finch-personality.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-act-pass.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-problem-framing-audit.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-epistemic-calibration.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-system-prompt-skepticism.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-critical-thinking.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-terminal-command-safety.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-pii-memory-filter.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-lint-discipline.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-no-deferred-debt.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-emotional-intelligence.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-reliance-nudges.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-session-health-monitoring.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-proactive-awareness.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-memory-triggers.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-worldview.instructions.md",
    "alex-act-greeting-checkin.instructions.md"
  ]
}

Uninstall reads this receipt. It never globs and deletes, because the heir's own files live in the same folder.

Idempotency

On re-run, compare the receipt's coreVersion against the installed Core version. Equal means skip and report "discipline bootstrap is current". Different means rewrite the seventeen files and update the receipt. Missing receipt with files present means a hand-edited state; report it and ask before touching anything.

Verify

Default verification is deterministic:

1. Receipt owns exactly seventeen files and records the installed Core version.
2. All seventeen destination files exist.
3. Every destination SHA-256 equals its bundled source.
4. No unrelated file in ~/.copilot/instructions/ is claimed by the receipt.

The clean-directory AI smoke is optional because it starts a model session and can consume material time, tokens, and credits. Disclose that cost and ask separately before running:

copilot -p "Do you have an instruction named act-pass available in this session? One sentence."

An empty directory matters. Running inside a workspace with its own brain proves nothing about user scope. The optional smoke is confirmation of host behavior, not a prerequisite for deterministic bootstrap success.

Step 7 — Report

Print a summary with four activation planes:

Plane	Evidence	Status vocabulary
installed	copilot plugin list plus installed plugin.json at the exact target version	pass / fail
enabled	exact user or repo enabledPlugins key is true	pass / fail
instruction-loaded	receipt, file count, Core version, and source-to-target hashes	pass / declined / stale / fail
skill-invokable	namespaced command executes; generic skill tool is probed only when available	pass / host-limited / fail

Then report:

• Plugins installed and at what version
• Plugins skipped (with reason: already-present, tenant-mismatch, off-network, user-declined)
• Discipline bootstrap: applied, declined, or skipped-as-current — and if applied, the file count and the overlap-scan result
• Files modified: ~/.copilot/settings.json — show a diff of what changed. If the bootstrap ran, also ~/.copilot/instructions/ plus its receipt
• Next steps: enabling Microsoft ecosystem plugins per project → /alex-act-enterprise setup-enterprise in that project's workspace; enabling Microsoft-internal signals → /alex-act-msft setup-msft (if MSFT installed)
• Visual-workflow companions (see § "Optional: visual workflow companions" above for ownership + rationale): if the heir mentioned chart authoring, dashboards, reports with visuals, PR screenshots, or any workload involving visual verification, tell them to invoke /alex-act-illustrator-plugin install-visual-companions after this install completes. Do NOT list the 9 plugins from here — the catalog + install-time caveats + verified-status list live in Illustrator's install-visual-companions skill to keep them from drifting across two plugins.
• If the bootstrap was declined, say plainly that Core's skills are available but the ACT discipline layer is not, and that /install-constellation can be re-run later to add it
• If all plugin and settings checks passed before Step 6, label the run bootstrap-only repair; do not replay or narrate skipped installation work as if it ran

Idempotency

The skill is safe to re-run. On subsequent runs:

• If all four (or three) plugins are already installed at their latest version, report "constellation is current — nothing to install" and exit.
• If some are missing, install only the missing ones.
• If any are at a lower version than what the marketplace currently ships, defer to update-plugins — this skill installs, it does not update.
• The discipline bootstrap has its own idempotency check, keyed on the receipt's coreVersion. A current constellation with a stale bootstrap receipt still warrants re-running Step 6.

Anti-patterns

Anti-pattern	Correction
Install all four without asking about MSFT tenant	Always tenant-check MSFT; default is "not installed" without explicit yes
Install at repo scope by default	Constellation plugins are user scope. Repo scope is for downstream Microsoft plugins (Azure, Fabric, etc.) — different skill (setup-enterprise-stack) does that.
Skip Core and install Illustrator standalone	Core is the baseline; Illustrator and the setup skills reference plugin-management which ships in Core. Do not skip Core.
Install MSFT on a public tenant	MSFT is Microsoft-internal only. Fail closed on the tenant check.
Overwrite pre-existing enabledPlugins entries	Merge, preserve. Delegate to plugin-management for the algorithm.
Report "installed successfully" without checking copilot plugin list, settings, and the install tree	Verify all three signals after each install.
Bootstrap the instructions silently as part of the install	Step 6 is separately consent-gated. User scope affects every workspace on the machine; that needs its own yes.
Write bootstrap files without the alex-act- prefix	A bare act-pass.instructions.md can clobber the heir's own file. Prefix always.
Skip the overlap scan because the workspace "probably" has no brain	Scopes compose. Scan, then report the real number.
Uninstall by globbing ~/.copilot/instructions/*	Read the receipt. The heir's own instructions live in that folder too.
Bootstrap all of Core's unconditional instructions	Seventeen only. The remaining instructions do not earn unconditional user-scope cost.
Assume the instruction files are somewhere on disk without checking	Resolve the source explicitly per the Source table. A Mall install vendors no .github/instructions/; only the skill-bundled bootstrap/ is guaranteed. This shipped broken in v0.2.0.
Fetch the instruction files from GitHub when the local source is missing	Never. A missing source is a packaging defect and must be reported as one, not papered over with a network call that can fail, hang, or pull an unpinned version.

Composes with

• plugin-management — this skill's dependency for all mechanical commands + safety rules
• update-plugins — after install, this skill's sibling handles keeping the constellation current
• setup-enterprise-stack (in alex-act-enterprise) — invoked after this skill inside a Microsoft-ecosystem project
• setup-msft-stack (in alex-act-msft) — invoked after this skill inside Microsoft-internal work
• configure-vscode (Batch 10) — complementary; that skill sets VS Code settings, this one sets Copilot CLI plugins

Falsifiability

Sunset or revise this skill by 2027-01-30 (6 months) if:

• The Alex ACT constellation gains or loses a plugin — the four-plugin table goes stale on emit.
• The default scope decision changes for any constellation plugin — the install-at-user default is wrong.
• The tenant check for MSFT proves inadequate (heirs off-network complete the install and hit failures) — the check needs tightening.
• Copilot CLI or VS Code ships plugin-scope instruction discovery. Step 6 becomes dead weight; delete it and the receipt machinery outright.
• The overlap scan reports a conflict on more than half of observed installs. User scope is the wrong target for heirs who already run a repo brain; make the bootstrap opt-in per workspace instead.
• Heirs report ACT discipline or personality firing where they did not want it, twice or more. The seventeen-file set is too broad; remove the lowest-value unconditional additions or make personality opt-in.
• The install order proves wrong (dependency inversion surfaces) — the order needs adjustment.
• ≥2 heirs report the idempotent re-run pattern doing damage (deleting pre-existing entries, re-installing when already current) — merge algorithm needs a regression fix.
• The bundled bootstrap/ drifts from .github/instructions/. The seventeen files are copies, and copies rot. If a source instruction is edited without the bundled copy following, heirs bootstrap a stale rule. Either add a release check that diffs the two sets, or replace the copies with a build step that generates them.
• Direct GitHub installs stop working or are removed by Copilot CLI. The interim MSFT distribution path must move before the breaking release; do not wait for users to discover it during setup.

Track outcomes in the maintaining repo's curation log.

Related

• /install-constellation — slash-command entry point
• plugin-management — general Copilot CLI plugin operations
• update-plugins — keep the constellation current after install
• Constellation doc: constellation/PLUGIN-INTEGRATION.md in Steward — the scope + install-order decisions that ground this skill