skill-management

name	skill-management
description	Discover, activate, and manage agent skills following the Skill Protocol
compatibility	>=1.4

Skill Management

Skill metadata: version "1.0"; license MIT; tags [skills, workflow, discovery, management]; compatibility ">=1.4"; recommended tools [codebase, editFiles, fetch].

Skills are reusable markdown-based behavioural instructions that teach the agent how to perform a specific workflow. Unlike tools (§11) which are executable scripts, skills are declarative — they shape the agent's approach rather than running code.

Skills follow the Agent Skills open standard. Each skill is a SKILL.md file with minimal YAML frontmatter (name, description) plus a markdown body that includes a Skill metadata note and step-by-step workflow instructions.

When to use

• You encounter a task that might match an existing skill
• The user asks to list, search for, or manage skills
• You need to decide where a new skill should be stored

Discovery and activation

Skills are loaded on demand — the agent reads a skill's SKILL.md only when the description field matches the current task context. Do not pre-load all skills.

Task requires a workflow
 │
 ├─ 1. SCAN — check .github/skills/*/SKILL.md descriptions
 │     ├─ Match found  → READ the full SKILL.md, follow its instructions
 │     └─ No match     → ↓
 │
 ├─ 2. SEARCH (if enabled by skill search preference setting)
 │     ├─ Search official repos (anthropics/skills, github/awesome-copilot) THEN:
 │     │     community sources (GitHub search, awesome-agent-skills)
 │     │     ├─ Found → evaluate fit, quality-check, adapt, save locally
 │     │     └─ Not found → ↓
 │
 └─ 3. CREATE — author a new skill from scratch
       - Save to .github/skills/<kebab-name>/SKILL.md

Scope hierarchy

Priority	Location	Scope
1 (highest)	.github/skills/<name>/SKILL.md	Project — checked into version control
2	~/.copilot/skills/<name>/SKILL.md	Personal — shared across all projects for one user
3	Agent plugins (@agentPlugins)	Plugin — installed via Extensions view (VS Code 1.110+)
4	Organization-level agents	Org — published at GitHub org level for all members

Agent file discovery: Use the chat.agentFilesLocations VS Code setting to add custom directories for skill/agent discovery beyond the default locations.

Subagent skill use

Subagents inherit this protocol fully. A subagent may read and follow any project or personal skill. To create a new skill, the subagent must flag the proposal to the parent agent, which confirms before any write to .github/skills/.