copilot-customization

copilot-customization is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator. It costs 90 tokens per session (1,617 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A reference guide to the ways VS Code GitHub Copilot can be customized, including rules, reusable prompts, agents, skills, tools, and plugins.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create or review Copilot customization files and compare instructions, skills, agents, prompts, MCP servers, hooks, and plugins.
Why use it?
It helps you choose the right customization format and explains why a customization file may not load or follow the expected specification.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator/copilot-customization
Any agent
npx skills add jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator --skill copilot-customization
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for copilot-customization

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator/copilot-customization.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator/copilot-customization)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator/copilot-customization"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator/copilot-customization.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 90 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,617 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
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 5.1 $0.00090 $0.01617
Opus 5 $0.00045 $0.00809
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00323
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00162

Measured 5d ago against content hash f6a1710bb396, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-05, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

copilot-customization 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 5d 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.

.archive/_archived_skills/copilot-customization/SKILL.md · 121 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 121 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Copilot Customization

Quick-reference for the full VS Code GitHub Copilot customization surface. Deep-dive content lives in references/ — load on demand, not all at once.


When to Use This Skill

  • Deciding which customization mechanism fits a new requirement
  • Creating a new customization file from scratch (need the frontmatter schema)
  • Debugging why an instruction/skill/agent/prompt is not loading
  • Reviewing a customization file for spec compliance
  • Comparing mechanisms (instructions vs skills vs agents vs prompts)

Do NOT load this skill for routine edits to existing files where you already know the format. For enforcement rules, use the instruction files directly (they auto-load via applyTo globs).

Quick Decision Tree

I want to...
├── Define coding standards for ALL files
│   → .github/copilot-instructions.md (always-on)
│
├── Define rules for SPECIFIC file types (by glob)
│   → .instructions.md with applyTo (auto-loaded when files match)
│
├── Store reference content agents read ON DEMAND (not always-on)
│   → SKILL.md with references/ directory
│
├── Create a reusable task I invoke manually with /name
│   → .prompt.md (slash command)
│
├── Create a specialized AI persona with its own tools
│   → .agent.md (custom agent)
│
├── Connect to external tools, APIs, or databases
│   → mcp.json (MCP server)
│
├── Run code at agent lifecycle points (block tools, auto-format)
│   → hooks/*.json (Preview — verify with live docs)
│
└── Bundle multiple customizations for distribution
    → agent plugin (Preview — verify with live docs)

The 7 Customization Mechanisms

# Mechanism File Type Loading Scope Portability
1 Custom Instructions .instructions.md Auto (glob match) Workspace / User VS Code
2 Prompt Files .prompt.md Manual (/name) Workspace / User VS Code
3 Custom Agents .agent.md Manual (picker) Workspace / User VS Code + GitHub
4 Agent Skills SKILL.md Auto (on-demand) Workspace / User Cross-agent standard
5 MCP Servers mcp.json Auto (on start) Workspace / User MCP standard
6 Hooks *.json Auto (on event) Workspace / User VS Code + Claude (Preview)
7 Agent Plugins marketplace Auto (on install) User VS Code + CLI (Preview)

Read the full file on GitHub · 121 lines

Files

What ships with it

9 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 5d ago First seen · 121 lines · 90 tokens per session scan A f6a1710bb396

Subscribe to this mod's changes

copilot-customization is a skill published in the GitHub repository jonathan-vella/apex-accelerator (50 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 90 tokens to every session and 1,617 once invoked, about $0.0005 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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