intelligent-terminal agent-skills.instructions.md

A set of guidelines for creating Agent Skills for GitHub Copilot: self-contained folders of instructions, scripts, examples, templates, or other resources for specialized tasks.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when designing or reviewing skill folders for VS Code, Copilot CLI, or Copilot coding agent, including their location and bundled resources.
Why use it?
It explains how to make skills portable, reusable, and loaded only when relevant instead of placing every rule in one general instruction file.

Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add instructions/microsoft/intelligent-terminal/agent-skills
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/intelligent-terminal

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Per session 3,888 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 3,888 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.03888 $0.03888
Opus 5 $0.01944 $0.01944
Sonnet 5 $0.00778 $0.00778
Haiku 4.5 $0.00389 $0.00389

Measured yesterday against content hash 4ec02159b0f3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

intelligent-terminal agent-skills.instructions.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

.github/instructions/agent-skills.instructions.md · 376 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 376 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Agent Skills File Guidelines

Instructions for creating effective and portable Agent Skills that enhance GitHub Copilot with specialized capabilities, workflows, and bundled resources.

What Are Agent Skills?

Agent Skills are self-contained folders with instructions and bundled resources that teach AI agents specialized capabilities. Unlike custom instructions (which define coding standards), skills enable task-specific workflows that can include scripts, examples, templates, and reference data.

Key characteristics:

  • Portable: Works across VS Code, Copilot CLI, and Copilot coding agent
  • Progressive loading: Only loaded when relevant to the user's request
  • Resource-bundled: Can include scripts, templates, examples alongside instructions
  • On-demand: Activated automatically based on prompt relevance

Directory Structure

Skills are stored in specific locations:

Location Scope Recommendation
.github/skills/<skill-name>/ Project/repository Recommended for project skills
.claude/skills/<skill-name>/ Project/repository Legacy, for backward compatibility
~/.github/skills/<skill-name>/ Personal (user-wide) Recommended for personal skills
~/.claude/skills/<skill-name>/ Personal (user-wide) Legacy, for backward compatibility

Each skill must have its own subdirectory containing at minimum a SKILL.md file.

Required SKILL.md Format

Frontmatter (Required)

---
name: webapp-testing
description: 'Toolkit for testing local web applications using Playwright. Use when asked to verify frontend functionality, debug UI behavior, capture browser screenshots, check for visual regressions, or view browser console logs. Supports Chrome, Firefox, and WebKit browsers.'
license: Complete terms in LICENSE.txt
---
Field Required Constraints
name Yes Lowercase, hyphens for spaces, max 64 characters (e.g., webapp-testing)
description Yes 10–1024 characters, clear capabilities AND use cases, wrapped in single quotes
license No Reference to LICENSE.txt (e.g., Complete terms in LICENSE.txt) or SPDX identifier

Read the full file on GitHub · 376 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 376 lines · 3,888 tokens per session scan A 4ec02159b0f3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

intelligent-terminal agent-skills.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/intelligent-terminal (1,895 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 3,888 tokens to every session, about $0.0194 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.