# Github Agents > This skill should be used when delegating work to agents that run inside GitHub — Copilot cloud agent, custom agents, Copilot code review, and GitHub Agentic Workflows — including when delegation beats doing the work directly. - Skill: `thelobbi/github-agents` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds add thelobbi/github-agents` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/thelobbi/github-agents/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: DevOps & Infra - Author: thelobbi (https://skillmd.com/u/thelobbi) - Updated: 2026-09-09 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/thelobbi/github-agents --- # Agents Inside GitHub GitHub hosts its own agents. Knowing when to hand work to one — instead of doing it in-session — is the difference between an orchestrator and a bottleneck. ## The surfaces | Surface | What it is | Good for | | --- | --- | --- | | **Copilot cloud agent** | An agent you assign an issue or task to; it works in its own environment and opens a PR | Well-scoped, independently verifiable changes | | **Custom agents** | Specialized configurations of the cloud agent, selectable at assignment | Repeated task shapes with house conventions | | **Copilot code review** | Automated review on a PR, requestable or automatic | A cheap first pass before human review | | **GitHub Agentic Workflows (`gh-aw`)** | Markdown workflows compiled to hardened Actions runs, driving an AI agent | Scheduled and event-driven agentic automation | | **This plugin** | Claude Code orchestrating from a session | Judgment, coordination, multi-repo, anything needing a conversation | ## Delegating to the Copilot cloud agent ``` mcp__github__assign_copilot_to_issue # hand off an existing issue mcp__github__create_pull_request_with_copilot # hand off a described task mcp__github__get_copilot_job_status # poll progress mcp__github__request_copilot_review # review pass on a PR ``` **Treat the issue as the prompt.** An issue assigned to an agent gets exactly the context written in it — no follow-up conversation. Before delegating, confirm the issue states: what to change, where, what "done" looks like, and how to verify. A vague issue produces a vague PR and costs more than doing it yourself. ### When delegation wins | Delegate | Keep in-session | | --- | --- | | Well-scoped, independently testable | Requires judgment or design decisions | | Mechanical breadth — rename across 40 files | Touches `humanReviewPaths` | | Parallel with work you are already doing | Needs conversation to pin down | | Clear acceptance criteria | Spans repositories or systems | | Low blast radius | Security-sensitive or irreversible | Delegation is **parallelism**, not abdication. The resulting PR is a normal PR: it goes through the same review board, the same CI drive-to-green, and the same merge gates. Never merge an agent's PR on lighter evidence than a human's — the gates exist because the author's identity is not what makes a change safe. ### `AGENTS.md` The repository-level instruction file agents read for house conventions — build commands, test commands, style, architectural constraints. Nested `**/AGENTS.md` files scope instructions to a subtree. A repo with a good `AGENTS.md` gets materially better output from **every** agent, including this one. If a repo lacks it and is being worked on repeatedly, writing one is high-leverage. ## GitHub Agentic Workflows (`gh-aw`) A CLI extension that compiles a Markdown workflow into a hardened GitHub Actions workflow running an AI agent (Copilot, Claude Code, Codex, or Gemini) with sandboxed execution and **read-only defaults**. ```bash gh extension install github/gh-aw gh aw init gh aw compile # .md → .lock.yml gh aw compile --actionlint --zizmor --poutine # with security scanners gh aw run gh aw logs # recent run logs gh aw audit # prompts and outputs for one run gh aw status ``` ### The lock file is the contract `gh aw compile` produces `.lock.yml` next to the `.md`. **The lock file is what Actions executes.** Commit both — the Markdown for readability, the lock file for execution, like a manifest and its lockfile. The failure mode to watch for: editing the Markdown, forgetting to recompile, and shipping the old compiled behavior. Treat a `.md` change without a matching `.lock.yml` change as an incomplete commit, the same as a `package.json` change without a lockfile update. Add a Dependabot ignore for the compiler-managed action, or you will get PRs trying to bump something `gh aw compile` owns: ```yaml - package-ecosystem: github-actions directory: "/.github/workflows" ignore: - dependency-name: "github/gh-aw-actions" # version-locked to the compiler ``` ### Safe outputs Writes back to GitHub go through **safe outputs** — declared, sanitized operations applied in a separate job — rather than granting the agent write permissions. Granting general `write` instead is possible and is the wrong choice: it converts a sandboxed agent into an unsandboxed one. This is the same principle as this plugin's write guard: constrain at the boundary, not by trusting the agent's intentions. ### Good agentic workflow shapes Scheduled triage of new issues · daily activity digest as an issue · dependency update triage · PR labelling from the diff · stale-work sweeps · docs drift checks. All read-heavy, all with a small, declared write surface. ## Copilot code review A cheap automated pass on every PR. It does **not** replace the review board — the board's value is adversarial verification, and a single-pass reviewer has no refutation stage. Run it as an extra lens whose findings enter the same verification pipeline, not as an authority. ## Choosing where work runs ``` Is it a conversation, a decision, or coordination? → this session Is it scoped, mechanical, and independently verifiable? → Copilot cloud agent Is it recurring on a schedule or an event? → agentic workflow Is it deterministic with no judgment at all? → a plain Actions workflow ``` The last line matters. An agent that reformats a file on a schedule is a worse, slower, less predictable `prettier --write` in a cron job. **Do not delegate to an agent what a deterministic workflow already does correctly** — see `actions-automation`, and check whether a built-in Projects workflow covers it before writing anything at all. ## See also - `actions-automation` — the deterministic alternative, and the trigger surface - `../commands/delegate.md` · `../agents/agent-delegator.md`