Use Agent Skills with GitHub Copilot

Agent skills are reusable sets of instructions that teach Copilot agents how to perform specific tasks, like running a build pipeline, generating boilerplate, or following your team's coding standards. By defining skills once, you save time and ensure consistent behavior across your workflow.

Skills complement custom agents and custom instructions. While custom agents define a persona and tool set, and custom instructions set general coding preferences, skills provide focused, task-specific guidance that any agent can discover and use automatically.

Prerequisites

• Visual Studio 2026 version 18.5 or later
• A GitHub Copilot subscription

How Agent Skills work

When you use agent mode, Copilot automatically discovers skills from your repository and user profile. The agent decides when a skill is relevant to your request and activates it. When a skill is activated, it appears in the chat to let you know it's being applied.

Skill locations

Skills are picked up from the following locations:

Workspace skills are shared with your team through source control. Personal skills apply to all your projects and aren't committed to any repository.

Create a skill

You can create a skill manually in your file system.

Create a skill manually

Each skill is a directory containing a SKILL.md file that follows the agentskills.io specification.

1. Create a skills directory. For a workspace skill, use .github/skills/ at the root of your repository. For a personal skill, use ~/.copilot/skills/.

2. Create a subdirectory for your skill. Each skill should have its own directory (for example, .github/skills/github-issues/).

3. Create a SKILL.md file in the skill directory. The file contains YAML frontmatter with metadata followed by Markdown instructions.

4. Optionally, add scripts, examples, or other resources to your skill's directory.

Skill directory structure

your-repo/
└── .github/
    └── skills/
        └── github-issues/
            ├── SKILL.md          # Required: metadata + instructions
            ├── scripts/          # Optional: executable code
            ├── references/       # Optional: documentation
            └── assets/           # Optional: templates, resources

SKILL.md format

The SKILL.md file must contain YAML frontmatter followed by Markdown content:

---
name: github-issues
description: Creates and manages GitHub issues following team conventions. Use when working with issue tracking, bug reports, or feature requests.
---

When creating GitHub issues:

- Use the standard title format: [Component] Brief description
- Add appropriate labels based on issue type
- Include reproduction steps for bug reports
- Link related issues and PRs

Frontmatter properties

Tips for writing effective skills

• Keep the main SKILL.md under 500 lines. Move detailed reference material to separate files in the references/ directory.
• Write a clear description that includes specific keywords to help agents identify when the skill is relevant.
• Include step-by-step instructions, examples, and common edge cases.

Manage skills from the skills panel

Select the Tools icon in the bottom-right corner of Copilot Chat to open the skills panel, a dedicated view of every discovered skill. The Skills panel is available only in the Visual Studio 2026 Insiders.

From the panel, you can:

• Edit: Open any skill's SKILL.md directly in the editor from the ... menu.
• Open file location: Jump to the skill directory on disk.
• Search: Filter skills by name or keyword.

The panel also surfaces diagnostics for any skill configuration errors, so you can quickly spot and fix issues.

Community skills

See the awesome-copilot repository for example skills shared by the community.

Related content

• Get started with GitHub Copilot agent mode
• Use custom agents in GitHub Copilot
• Customize chat responses and set context
• Use MCP servers