Contents

• Why Copilot Agents
• Instructions
  • Boilerplates & Templates
  • Language & Stack
  • Framework / Library
  • Tools
  • Workflows
• Prompts
  • AI Development Tasks
• Custom Agents
  • AI Development Mode
• 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

• General Language - Standard language template to build instruction files.

Boilerplate

• Standard IaC Tools Boilerplate - Standard tool boilerplate for infrastructure-as-code tools.

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

• Standard Focus - iOS and macOS development with Swift and SwiftUI.

TypeScript

• Standard Focus - TypeScript development for web and Node.js applications.

Framework / Library

Cobra CLI (Go)

• Charmbracelet Bubbles CLI - Interactive terminal applications with Charm's Bubble Tea framework and Golang Cobra CLI.

Node.js (TypeScript)

• Azure Function App - Azure Function Apps using TypeScript Node.js.
• Express API - REST API development with Express.js and TypeScript Node.js.

Tools

Content Management Systems (CMS)

Drupal

• Standard Focus for Drupal 11 - Drupal 11 module and theme development.

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.

• PRD Creation Prompt - Create detailed Product Requirements Documents using prompt tasks.
• Task Generation Prompt - Break PRDs into actionable development tasks using prompt tasks.
• Task Execution Prompt - Systematic task execution with proper testing and Git practices using prompt tasks.

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.
• Azure Prices - Look up and compare Azure service pricing using the Azure Retail Prices API.

Development

• Playwright CLI - Automate browser interactions, test web pages and work with Playwright tests.
• Frontend Design - Create distinctive, production-grade frontend interfaces with high design quality.
• Webapp Testing - Toolkit for interacting with and testing local web applications using Playwright.

MCPs

MCPs (Model Context Protocol servers) give agents a standardized way to connect to external tools, APIs, data sources, and local capabilities. They extend what an agent can do beyond plain chat by exposing actions such as reading files, browsing the web, querying cloud platforms, or interacting with development tooling through a common protocol.

This section highlights useful MCP servers you can add to your Copilot setup to expand agent capabilities for research, development, automation, and cloud workflows.

General MCPs

• Knowledge Graph Memory - Create a local knowledge graph for your agent to remember information across different chat sessions.
• Filesystem - Read and write files in batch operations, search file contents, list files, and validate file paths.
• Fetch - Automate web browsing for agents to retrieve and process content from web pages, converting HTML to markdown for easier consumption.
• Sequential Thinking - Break down complex problems into structured steps.
• GitHub - Allow your agent access to repository and workflow management.
• Time - Enables agents to get current time information and perform timezone conversions using IANA timezone names, with automatic system timezone detection.

Development MCPs

• Playwright - Playwright MCP to automate browser interactions, test web pages and work with Playwright tests.
• Context7 - Inject version-specific code documentation in your agent session to provide the correct API docs for code generation.

Cloud MCPs

• Azure MCP - Azure MCP Server supercharges your agents with Azure context across different Azure services.
• AWS Documentation - Agent tools to access AWS documentation, search for content, and get recommendations.
• gcloud - Agent tools to interact with the Google Cloud environment using the gcloud CLI.
• KubeStellar Console - MCP server bridging AI agents to multi-cluster Kubernetes environments for cluster management, pod inspection, and real-time observability.

How to Use

Setup Copilot in VSCode

1. Hover over the Copilot icon in the Status Bar and select Set up Copilot.
2. Select Sign in to sign in to your GitHub account or Use Copilot if you're already signed in.

Tip: Read more about setting up VS Code Copilot.

Setup Instructions

1. Create instruction files using the latest naming conventions:
   1. Workspace instructions (place *.instructions.md files in .github/instructions/ directory).
   2. Workspace prompts (place *.prompt.md files in .github/prompts/ directory).
   3. Workspace custom agents (place *.agent.md files in .github/agents directory).
   4. Workspace custom skills (skills are stored in directories with a SKILL.md file that defines the skill's behavior).
   5. Workspace single instruction (place copilot-instructions.md in .github directory).

File Types

Instruction Files

.instructions.md - Contextual instructions that apply to specific files or file types.

Prompt Files

.prompt.md - Reusable prompts for specific tasks or workflows.

Custom Agent Files

.agent.md - Predefined AI personas behavior in VS Code for specific dev roles.

Custom Agent Skills

SKILLS.md - Portable, version-controlled folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that agents can discover and load on demand.

Formatting

Use YAML front matter to specify metadata like applyTo, mode, and description.

Contributing

All contributions are welcome! If you would like to share instruction files (.instructions.md), prompt files (.prompt.md), skills (SKILL.md in a skill folder) or custom agents (.agent.md), see the contribution guide for details.