project-capability-adoption

name	project-capability-adoption
description	Guides on-need adoption of an Agency MCP or Microsoft Foundry capability from the starter's capability catalog. Use when a project asks 'can we use X', 'should we adopt X', or needs to pull a specific tool/profile/Foundry capability without loading the whole surface.
lastReviewed	"2026-07-08T00:00:00.000Z"

Project Capability Adoption

Use this skill when a project wants to pull a single capability on need — an Agency MCP, an Agency profile, a curated plugin, or a Microsoft Foundry capability — instead of adopting the whole tool surface up front.

The source of truth is the catalog in agency-mcp-capabilities.md:

• Agency MCP surface — the Profile-to-MCP map and Capability Catalog (MCPs configured in agency.toml).
• Foundry Capability Catalog (On-Need) — Microsoft Foundry product capabilities (IQ family, Toolboxes, Tool Search, Routines, autopilot agents, Agent Optimizer, Memory, Claude, SDKs). These run on a different runtime than Agency profiles and are awareness/adoption guidance, not wired into any starter profile.

Route The Request

Request	Default route
"Which profile/MCP do I use for task X?"	agency-mcp-capabilities.md Profile-to-MCP map; prefer the narrowest matching profile
"Can we adopt Fabric work / semantic models / notebooks?"	project-fabric-operations skill + the project-fabric* templates
"Can we adopt a Foundry capability (Toolboxes, Tool Search, Routines, autopilot agents, IQ family, Claude)?"	project-foundry-operations skill + the Foundry Capability Catalog
"Should we install this curated plugin?"	plugin-adoption-checklist.md
"Is this GA or preview?"	Check the status column in the catalog, then re-confirm against Microsoft's current docs — preview labels move fast

On-Need Adoption Steps

1. Name the active problem. Do not adopt a capability speculatively. If no current task needs it, record it as a candidate and stop.
2. Find it in the catalog. Locate the row in agency-mcp-capabilities.md. Note its runtime (Agency MCP profile vs. Foundry), status, and the "Pull when" / "Use when" trigger.
3. Confirm status. For anything marked preview, re-check Microsoft's current docs before relying on it. Preview items ship without an SLA and can change.
4. Prefer the narrowest, read-only path first. For Agency work, use agency copilot --profile-only <profile>. For Foundry work, prefer observability/read paths before write-capable or identity-bearing ones (autopilot agents, live ontology writes).
5. Run the plugin adoption checklist where a plugin is involved (plugin-adoption-checklist.md): inspect the README, list agents/skills, check write/PR/external-call behavior, install through a profile not globally.
6. Record the decision in the project's own docs (and, if this starter is being evolved, in whats-new.md). The additive-merge installer cannot distinguish "never adopted" from "deliberately declined," so a declined capability must be recorded to survive a future merge.

Safety Rules

• Foundry capabilities are a different runtime than Agency profiles. Do not imply a Foundry capability is available through agency.toml — it is not.
• Preview status is not a green light. Confirm current status and data-handling terms before a project depends on a preview capability.
• Identity-bearing capabilities (Foundry autopilot agents get their own Entra Agent ID, mailbox, calendar, and Teams presence) are governance-sensitive. Treat their adoption like provisioning a new user account, not enabling a tool.
• Live-write capabilities (Fabric IQ ontology authoring, semantic-model fixes, remediation plugins) require review-before-apply. Prefer their Preview & Confirm gates.
• Keep sessions narrow. Adopting one capability is not a reason to load an unrelated profile or toolbox alongside it.

Would Revise If

Revisit by 2026-09-30. Revise or delete this skill if the catalog structure in agency-mcp-capabilities.md changes, or if two projects using the starter adopt a capability without going through the catalog because the routing here was unclear.