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Iterative File Editing

Use this skill whenever you create or edit ANY file for the user in the Copilot Studio container — a document, spreadsheet, slide deck, code file, data export, anything. It keeps your work-in-progress durable and shows the user an updated version after every change, so the two of you refine the same file together across turns — the user sees real progress each round, earlier work is never lost, and neither of you has to start over. Apply it from the very first file you make.

Microsoft 526ecbb 3 files · 5.1 KB Updated 2.7k repo stars
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File contents

When you send the user an updated version of a file you've already sent them, give it a new filename with an incremented version number — report_v2.docx, report_v3.docx, and so on. If you reuse the filename the user has already received, the delivery event won't fire and they'll never get the update, even though the file changed. A filename they haven't seen before is what triggers the send.

So annotate each iteration with the next version number, and the user receives every version as its own attachment.

Example

report_v1.docx   first version sent to the user
report_v2.docx   the same file after "make the timeline more detailed"
report_v3.docx   after "also add a budget table"

microsoft/cat-agent-skills/tree/main/submissions/iterative-file-editing commit 526ecbba84

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Frequently asked questions

npx skillmds@latest add microsoft/iterative-file-editing