Agent Skills — VS Code Extension
One-click setup for production-grade engineering workflows in GitHub Copilot and Codex.
Stop manually copying SKILL.md files. Install this extension, run "Setup", and your AI coding agents follow disciplined engineering practices automatically.
What This Gives Your Copilot
5 Essential Skills (Quick Setup)
- test-driven-development — Red-green-refactor cycle. Write failing tests first.
- code-review-and-quality — Five-axis review (correctness, design, readability, security, performance)
- security-and-hardening — Input validation, auth, injection prevention, secrets detection
- debugging-and-error-recovery — Reproduce → isolate → root-cause → fix → regression test
- git-workflow-and-versioning — Branching, commit hygiene, PR patterns
15+ Additional Skills (Full Setup)
spec-driven-development, planning-and-task-breakdown, incremental-implementation, api-and-interface-design, frontend-ui-engineering, performance-optimization, shipping-and-launch, ci-cd-and-automation, observability-and-instrumentation, and more.
4 Agent Personas
- code-reviewer — Senior Staff Engineer five-axis review
- security-auditor — OWASP-style vulnerability detection
- test-engineer — Test strategy and coverage analysis
- web-performance-auditor — Core Web Vitals audit
Usage
Setup
- Install this extension from the VS Code marketplace
- Open any project folder
- Click "Set Up" when prompted, or run
Agent Skills: Setup workspace from the command palette
- Choose Quick Setup (5 essential skills) or Full Setup (all 24)
After Setup
- Copilot automatically discovers skills in
.github/skills/ and activates them when relevant
- Agent personas appear as
@code-reviewer, @security-auditor, etc. in Copilot Chat
- Copilot follows the coding standards in
.github/copilot-instructions.md
- Codex follows the rules in
.codex/rules.md
Commands
| Command |
What it does |
Agent Skills: Setup workspace |
Scaffold skills, agents, and config files |
Agent Skills: Add skills to workspace... |
Add individual skills |
Agent Skills: Update workspace skills |
Refresh from latest extension bundle |
Agent Skills: Remove Agent Skills from workspace |
Clean up all agent-skills files |
Agent Skills: Show Agent Skills status |
View installed skills and agents |
Configuration
| Setting |
Default |
Description |
agentSkills.autoDetect |
true |
Show setup prompt when opening a workspace without skills |
agentSkills.gitignoreSkills |
true |
Add .github/skills/ to .gitignore |
agentSkills.defaultSkills |
5 essential skills |
Skills installed by Quick Setup |
How It Works
The extension scaffolds these files into your workspace:
your-project/
├── .github/
│ ├── skills/
│ │ ├── test-driven-development/SKILL.md
│ │ ├── code-review-and-quality/SKILL.md
│ │ └── ...
│ ├── agents/
│ │ ├── code-reviewer.agent.md
│ │ ├── security-auditor.agent.md
│ │ └── ...
│ └── copilot-instructions.md
├── .codex/
│ └── rules.md
└── .gitignore ← optionally includes .github/skills/
GitHub Copilot auto-discovers skills in .github/skills/ and agent personas in .github/agents/. Codex reads .codex/rules.md for project coding standards.
Skills update when you update the extension — run Agent Skills: Update workspace skills to refresh.
Requirements
- VS Code 1.85+
- GitHub Copilot or Codex (optional — skills still useful for manual reference)
Source
All skills are maintained at github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills.
