Skill Creator

Skill Creator

This skill helps you create new Agent Skills for this repository. Agent Skills are specialized, repeatable tasks that GitHub Copilot can handle in agent mode.

Why Agent Skills?

• Specialized Workflows: Handle tasks like debugging or testing without repetitive prompting.
• Open Standard: Uses the Anthropic standard for portability across tools (VS Code, Copilot CLI, Cursor).
• Domain-Specific: Injects repo-specific instructions and resources on demand.
• Context Efficiency: Reduces context window bloat by loading only relevant skills.

Mental Model

Agent Skills are repository-level extensions.

• A skill is a directory under .github/skills/.
• Each skill contains a mandatory SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter (name, description) and a Markdown body.
• Copilot matches your request to a skill description and injects the content into its context.

Steps to Create a New Skill

1. Choose a Name: Use lowercase and hyphens (e.g., my-new-skill).
2. Create Directory: Create a directory at .github/skills/<skill-name>/.
3. Create SKILL.md: Create a SKILL.md file inside that directory.
4. Add Metadata: Include YAML frontmatter with name and description.
   • name: The name of the skill (same as the directory name).
   • description: A clear, prompt-aligned description (e.g., "Use for debugging failing GitHub Actions").
5. Add Instructions: Write the markdown body with clear steps, examples, and guidance.
6. Optional Resources: Add scripts, data files, or tools in the same directory.

Survival Kit

• Day 0: Install VS Code Insiders and enable Copilot.
• Week 1: Create your first skill and confirm it autoloads by writing a matching prompt.
• Week 2: Build production skills with scripts and share them in the team repo.

Best Practices

• One Job Per Skill: Keep skills focused. Split them if they become too large.
• Clear Descriptions: Vague descriptions cause irrelevant loading.
• No Secrets: Never embed secrets; use environment variables.
• Compactness: Keep skills compact to save context.

Example SKILL.md Template

---
name: <skill-name>
description: <clear-description-of-the-skill>
---
<instructions-and-examples-go-here>

Debugging & Observability

• Enable Copilot debug mode: copilot.chat.debug=true.
• Check the VS Code output panel logs for skill injection.
• Use /explain to see how the skill is being applied.

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