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.
npx agentmods add skills/drvoss/everything-copilot-cli/background-agentnpx skills add drvoss/everything-copilot-cli --skill background-agentgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/drvoss/everything-copilot-cliWhat 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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | $0.00054 | $0.01543 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00027 | $0.00772 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00011 | $0.00309 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00154 |
Grade A, and why
background-agent 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 2d ago.
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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 195 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Background Delegation
What It Is
Background Delegation hands off tasks to a cloud-based Copilot coding agent on GitHub. Your terminal is immediately freed. The agent works on a branch in GitHub, and you review the result there — as a branch diff or as a PR when you ask Copilot to create one.
This is distinct from async PowerShell (for local long-running processes like builds/servers),
which still uses mode: "async" in the powershell tool.
When to Use
- Large refactors or multi-file migrations you don't want to block on
- Full test suite additions or comprehensive documentation generation
- Complex tasks where you want research or an implementation plan before any code is written
- Any task that benefits from running in a fresh, isolated context on GitHub
- Handing off work while you continue unrelated local development
When NOT to Use
| Instead of background-agent | Use |
|---|---|
| A small, well-scoped edit you can finish immediately | Work directly in the current session |
| A local build, dev server, watcher, or test run | Async PowerShell with mode: "async" |
| A read-only query where you need the answer right away | Answer directly in the current session |
| A task that depends on local-only services, hardware, or unshared secrets | Keep the work local rather than delegating to GitHub |
Cloud Agent Deep Work Mode
For complex tasks where architectural analysis matters before implementation, ask the cloud agent to research first and present a plan before it edits files.
- Research: Copilot investigates the codebase, dependencies, and current behavior
- Plan: Copilot proposes an implementation approach before writing code
- Review: You refine or approve the approach on GitHub
- Implement: Copilot executes the approved plan on the branch
When to use deep work vs direct delegation
| Scenario | Use |
|---|---|
| Large refactor across many files | Research + plan first |
| Architecture change with unclear scope | Research + plan first |
| Small, well-scoped change | Direct delegation with & or /delegate |
| Repetitive bulk operation | Direct delegation with & or /delegate |
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.
- 2d ago First seen · 195 lines · 54 tokens per session scan A 8d661a208791
background-agent is a skill published in the GitHub repository drvoss/everything-copilot-cli (45 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 54 tokens to every session and 1,543 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.
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