At a Glance
Agent Skills are reusable instruction sets that teach Copilot how to handle specialized tasks.
They are only loaded when the request matches the description, so specialist knowledge is applied without re-explaining every time.
2 Scopes
| 👥 Team Shared | 👤 Personal | |
|---|---|---|
| 📁 Location | .github/skills/ inside the repository | User home ~/.copilot/skills/ |
| 🎯 Scope | That repository only | All sessions for that user |
| 🤝 Sharing | Included in the repo — available to every teammate | Local only, not shared with other members |
| 💡 Purpose | Project-specific workflows (deploy, test generation, etc.) | Personal productivity |
How It Works
Agent Skills are loaded via Progressive Disclosure.
Rather than putting every skill’s full content in context from the start, only lightweight metadata is read first; the content is expanded only for the skill that matches the user’s request.
| Stage | What is loaded | When | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | name / description | At startup / candidate selection | Determine which skill is likely to apply |
| 2 | SKILL.md body | When description matches the request | Hand the concrete execution steps to the agent |
| 3 | scripts / references / assets | When SKILL.md requires them | Add only the supporting information needed for execution |
💡 The description is everything: if it’s vague, the skill won’t match — or the wrong skill gets called.
Write “what this skill does” + “when to use it” clearly.
Example
You can write skills yourself or install community-built ones as-is.
GitHub-hosted skills are added to the current repository’s skill directory (e.g. .github/skills/ or .copilot/skills/) via gh skill install (GitHub CLI v2.90.0+).
github/awesome-copilot
GitHub’s official curated skill collection. Pick the skill you want and add it.
gh skills install github/awesome-copilot <skill-name>skills.sh - Visit page
A cross-ecosystem open registry. Browse and add GitHub-hosted skills.
gh skills install <owner>/<repo> <skill-name>