Contents
- Why Copilot Agents
- Instructions
- Boilerplates & Templates
- Language & Stack
- Framework / Library
- Tools
- Workflows
- Prompts
- Custom Agents
- Agent Skills
- MCPs
- How to Use
Why Copilot Agents
Customized instructions, prompts, agent skills, agent MCPs and custom agents help guide GitHub Copilot by providing contextual details about your repository such as the type of workflow your team follows, tools and other project specific details such as coding style, frameworks used or project specific rules.
Tip: Learn more about customizing GitHub Copilot in VS Code in the VS Code documentation.
Instructions
Instructions provides Copilot with repository-specific context, such as coding standards, frameworks, or workflows, to improve code suggestions.
Boilerplates & Templates
Templates
Boilerplate
Language & Stack
C
- Standard Focus - System libraries, CLI tools, and embedded applications with POSIX/GNU libc.
C-Sharp
- Standard Focus - .NET applications with modern C# patterns and best practices.
C++
- Standard Focus - Modern C++ development with STL, RAII, and performance optimization.
Go
- Standard Focus - Go for microservices, CLI tools, and concurrent applications.
Java
- Standard Focus - Enterprise Java development with Spring framework and modern patterns.
JavaScript
- Standard Focus - Modern JavaScript with ES6+, Node.js, and browser development.
Kotlin
- Standard Focus - Kotlin for Android development and multi-platform projects.
Lua
- Standard Focus - Lua scripting for embedded systems, game development, and automation.
Python
- Standard Focus - Python development for web applications, data science, and automation.
Rust
- Standard Focus - Systems programming with Rust's ownership model and memory safety.
Swift
TypeScript
- Standard Focus - TypeScript development for web and Node.js applications.
Framework / Library
Cobra CLI (Go)
Node.js (TypeScript)
Tools
Content Management Systems (CMS)
Drupal
Infra as Code (IaC)
Terraform
- Standard Focus - Standard Terraform instructions.
- Atmos - Terraform workflow orchestration with Atmos framework.
Workflows
AI Development Instructions
A comprehensive workflow for AI-assisted development featuring structured approaches to planning, task generation, and execution.
- PRD Creation - Create detailed Product Requirements Documents.
- Task Generation - Break PRDs into actionable development tasks.
- Task Execution - Systematic task execution with proper testing and Git practices.
Prompts
Prompts are reusable tasks or workflow instructions that help guide Copilot to perform specific actions or generate certain outputs.
AI Development Tasks
A comprehensive workflow for AI-assisted development featuring structured approaches to planning, task generation, and execution.
Custom Agents
Custom agents let you set up different AI personas in VS Code for specific dev roles (like security reviewer, planner, or architect), each with its own instructions, tools, and behavior. You can also use handoffs to move between these specialized agents in a guided workflow (e.g., planning → implementation → review) with relevant context carried over.
The built-in available custom agents are:
- Agent
- Ask
- Edit
- Plan
- AIAgentExpert
- Configure Custom Agents (create your own)
AI Development Mode
- Architect - Design and plan software systems.
- Clean Code - Write clean, readable, and maintainable code using clean code best practices.
- Debugger - Debug your application code to find a fix.
- PRD Creation - Build Product Requirements Document (PRD).
Agent Skills
Agent Skills are portable, open standard, version-controlled folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that agents can discover and load on demand to do tasks more accurately and efficiently. They let agents gain domain expertise, new capabilities, and repeatable workflows—while making those same skills reusable across different compatible agent products and teams.
General
- Calculator - Performs arbitrary-precision arithmetic calculations including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponents.
- Jira CLI - Interact with Jira from the command line to create, list, view, edit, and transition issues, manage sprints and epics, and perform common Jira workflows.
- Skill Creator - Create new skills, modify and improve existing skills, and measure skill performance.
Documents
- docx - Document creation, editing, and analysis with support for tracked changes, comments, formatting preservation, and text extraction.
- pdf - PDF manipulation toolkit for extracting text and tables, creating new PDFs, merging/splitting documents, and handling forms.
- pptx - Presentation creation, editing, and analysis.
- xlsx - Spreadsheet creation, editing, and analysis with support for formulas, formatting, data analysis, and visualization.
Cloud
- Az CLI - Azure CLI documentation to execute or ask about Azure CLI commands.