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 ※ Clearly state what the skill does + when to use it |
| 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 |
What happens inside the harness?
When a user makes a request, the harness first loads only the metadata for every skill into context. When the LLM decides it needs a specific skill, the harness expands the full body (SKILL.md) and adds it to the context.
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. .agents/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>GitHub Agent Finder
A discovery service that searches across MCP servers, tools, skills, and agents for a task. Install the agentfinder skill, then run /agentfinder <what you want> to list matches. See the SKILL.md definition.
gh skills install ards-project/connectors skills/github-copilotAgent Plugins 1.0
Agent Plugins 1.0 is a vendor-neutral open standard that packages Agent Skills and MCP servers into a single installable plugin.
| Path | Contents | Portable? |
|---|---|---|
📦 plugin.json | Manifest — $schema targets the 1.0 spec | ✅ All clients |
🧠 skills/ | One folder per skill, each with SKILL.md | ✅ All clients |
🔌 mcp.json | Local and remote MCP server config | ✅ All clients |
🐙 com.github.copilot/ | Custom agents, commands, rules, hooks, canvases | ⬜ Copilot only |
That last row is the trick: only skills and MCP are standardized, so everything Copilot-specific stays in a namespaced folder that other clients simply skip.
🌐 Build once, run it in VS Code, Copilot CLI, the SDK, and the Copilot app — GA on all plans. 🏢 Enterprise:
managed-settings.jsonstill governs which plugins and marketplaces are allowed.
Install and use a plugin
Two marketplaces ship built in: copilot-plugins (GitHub’s own) and awesome-copilot (community).
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
🔍 copilot plugin marketplace browse awesome-copilot | See what’s available |
📥 copilot plugin install <name>@awesome-copilot | Install from a marketplace |
📋 copilot plugin list | Show installed plugins and their state |
🗑️ copilot plugin uninstall <name> | Remove it |
You can also install from owner/repo, owner/repo:path, or a git URL. copilot --plugin-dir ./my-plugin loads one straight from disk without installing it.
⚠️ Installs are user-level, not per-repo — they land in
~/.copilot/installed-plugins/and apply to every project.