SKC Workstation Tools

SKC workstation setup for Business Central AL, Web/Python, and Power Platform, from SK Consulting S.A.. It adds Copilot agents, native chat forking, MCP presets, XLF translation, document skills, and four productivity themes.

Install from the Visual Studio Marketplace (ext install SKConsultingSA.skc-vs-tools). Source: skc-bc-vscode-tools.

What you get

• @harold in Copilot Chat — type @harold how do I post a sales invoice? (or /docs, /object, /how).

• Fork Copilot Chat — focus any earlier request or response, then run SKC: Fork Copilot Chat at Focused Message to continue in a separate native chat session.

• Copilot AI for AL — BC subagents (research, architecture, logic, UI, review, tests, translation, CAL conversion, control add-ins) and skills (bc-orchestration, bc-agent-sdk, bc-migration, bc-word-layout, bc-control-addin, mermaid-to-word).

• One workstation profile — AL, Web/Python, and Power Platform/BI tooling, settings, MCP servers, skills, and agents all apply together to your default profile.

• Office and document work — docx, pptx and xlsx skills plus mermaid-to-word, applying-brand-guidelines and frontend-slides for reports, decks and workbooks.

• BCQuality reviews — the official Microsoft BCQuality plugin snapshot is bundled offline and used additively by the reviewer/orchestrator. Live refresh is explicit or opt-in.

• Workspace presets — AL settings, CodeCop and UICop, and MCP servers applied explicitly with SKC: Apply Presets.

• Four AL-tuned themes — one family, four working situations, all structurally identical so switching never moves meaning:

  • SKC Dark — the daily driver, from the skc.lu dark design system (applied with presets).
  • SKC Light — daylight and bright-office work, from the skc.lu website palette.
  • SKC Presentation — high contrast for demos, workshops and screen sharing: loud cursor, bordered find matches and selections that survive a projector or video compression.
  • SKC Beach — warm and low blue light, for long or late sessions.

  Every variant colors what AL work actually touches: analyzer diagnostics (CodeCop, UICop, AppSourceCop) and Error Lens, diff and merge-conflict surfaces for delta and upgrade work, six-level bracket pairs for deep begin/end nesting, the parameter-name and return-type inlay hints the presets switch on, sticky scroll for long codeunits, and Test Explorer states for BC test codeunits.

• XLF translation — sidebar to preview and translate .g.xlf files with Azure AI.

What's included

• presets/settings.json — user settings applied to User scope, plus the extensions list installed by SKC: Apply Presets (AL, Web/Python, and Power Platform/BI tooling combined)
• presets/mcp.json — MCP servers written to mcp.servers (secrets come from VS Code secret storage)
• themes/*.json — the four SKC color themes. These are generated: edit the palettes in scripts/build-themes.js and run npm run build:themes, then commit the result. Hand-editing a single theme file makes the variants drift apart.
• skills/ — Copilot skill bundles (SKC BC skills plus the Anthropic curated set)
• skills/bcquality/ — official BCQuality plugin snapshot, knowledge index, layers, bridge, and tools
• agents/ — BC Copilot subagents
• instructions/ — user-level Copilot instruction files applied to every chat
• Translations view — .g.xlf files and Azure AI translation

How to use

Ask Business Central questions (@harold)

1. Open Copilot Chat.
2. Type @harold and your question. You do not need to pick an Agent or know skill names.

Examples:

• @harold how do I post a sales invoice?
• @harold /how warehouse shipment
• @harold /object Customer
• @harold /docs VAT posting groups

@harold looks up Microsoft Learn for that question. /object can also use local AL symbols when a project is open.

Fork a Copilot Chat

1. In Copilot Chat, click the request or response where the new branch should end.
2. Open the Command Palette and run SKC: Fork Copilot Chat at Focused Message.
3. Continue in the new chat. The original conversation remains unchanged.

This command uses VS Code's native session fork when the installed VS Code version provides it. Older versions show an update message instead of copying chat data through an unsupported storage API.

Presets, extensions, and AI

1. Install SKC Workstation Tools from the Marketplace.
2. Run SKC: Apply Presets to install the combined AL, Web/Python, and Power Platform/BI extensions, AL settings, and MCP configuration into your current (default) profile.
3. Copilot skills and agents install with presets. You can also run SKC: Install Copilot Skills and SKC: Install Copilot Agents.

Skills land in ~/.copilot/skills/. Agents land in ~/.copilot/agents/. Instruction files land in the active profile's prompts/ folder, where VS Code picks them up for every chat.

skc-context-hygiene.instructions.md tells agents to treat image files as opaque binaries and to open one only when you pointed at that specific image. Attaching a folder or an application root otherwise pulls images buried in the tree into the model's context as though you had shared them. VS Code has no setting that filters images out of context, so this has to be a rule the agent follows.

Workstation setup

This extension does not declare an extensionPack or extensionDependencies in its manifest, so the Marketplace page does not auto-list installs. Instead, SKC: Apply Presets installs the following Marketplace extensions into your current (default) profile, from the extensions list in presets/settings.json:

All of the above install together in one run of SKC: Apply Presets, along with the AL settings, MCP servers (including the Microsoft Learn Docs MCP server), Copilot skills, and Copilot agents — all applied to whichever profile is active, normally your default profile.

The Power Platform Tools extension pack is intentionally excluded because it installs CodeQL and SARIF. Install the Power Apps CLI (pac) separately only on workstations that manage solutions or Power Pages.

Code apps additionally need Node.js LTS and Git on the machine; the extension does not install those.

The preset does not register a Dataverse MCP server. To add one, put an entry in your own mcp.json with the real environment URL — https://yourorg.crm4.dynamics.com/api/mcp. Never leave a <PLACEHOLDER> in a url: VS Code validates every URL before it answers an MCP discovery request, so a single unparseable URL fails the whole list and hangs chat in that profile. The server must also be enabled per environment in the Power Platform admin center, with Microsoft GitHub Copilot allowed as an MCP client — otherwise the endpoint refuses the connection.

Translations

1. Click the SKC Workstation Tools icon in the activity bar.
2. Run SKC: Configure Translation URL and set your Azure Translation Function endpoint.
3. The Translations view lists .g.xlf files in a Translations folder:
   • MyFile.g.xlf (45/120) — 45 of 120 units translated
   • Green = 100% complete, yellow = partial, gray = not started
4. Click play next to a file to translate it.
5. Pick a target language from app.json (supportedLocales or features[].languages).
6. The result is saved as MyFile.<lang>.xlf (for example MyFile.fr-FR.xlf).

Settings (skc.*)

Commands

Copilot and language-model tools

SKC Workstation Tools contributes the @harold chat participant, Copilot chat skills, and language-model tools (#translateXlf, #listTranslations). It can also expose VS Code tools such as al_build through an MCP SSE bridge. VS Code may show a confirmation dialog (Run 'Build AL Project'). That prompt is a VS Code security feature: use Always allow to reduce repeats. It cannot be turned off from this extension.

Build and publish

npm install
npm run compile
npx vsce package

This is a public Marketplace listing. See PUBLISHING.md.

BCQuality live downloads are disabled by default. Set skc.bcQualityUpdateOnApply to true only when an online refresh during preset application is desired; otherwise the bundled snapshot and validated offline fallback are used.