Azure DevOps Skills is a collection of reusable instruction bundles that teach AI coding assistants how to perform recurring Azure DevOps tasks. The examples support workflows such as reviewing backlogs, listing active work, and managing iterations through the Azure DevOps MCP server.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to microsoft/azure-devops-skills. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/azure-devops-skills/main/.github/skills/boards-backlog-summary/SKILL.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/azure-devops-skillsWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/azure-devops-skills/boards-backlog-summary)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/azure-devops-skills/boards-backlog-summary"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/azure-devops-skills/boards-backlog-summary.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00064 | $0.01098 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00032 | $0.00549 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00013 | $0.00220 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00006 | $0.00110 |
Grade A, and why
boards-backlog-summary 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 7d 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 — 96 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Get team backlog summary
This skill retrieves the team's Requirements-level backlog, filters to Active items assigned to the current user, enriches them with parent and child work item details, and displays them sorted by priority.
Project selection
- If the user provides a project name in their request (for example, "for Contoso"), use that project directly and do not call
core_list_projects. - If the project name is not provided, ask the user once to provide it.
- If the project name is still not provided after asking once, call
core_list_projectsto return a list of projects the user can choose from. - Do not continue if no project has been provided or selected.
Team selection
- If the user provides a team name, use it directly and do not call
core_list_project_teams. - If the team name is not provided, ask the user once to provide it.
- If the team name is still not provided after asking once, call
core_list_project_teamsfor the selected project so the user can pick a team. - Do not continue if no team has been provided or selected.
Tools
Use Azure DevOps MCP Server tools for all interactions with Azure DevOps.
core_list_projects: Get the list of projects the user can choose from.core_list_project_teams: Get the list of teams for a project.wit_backlog(action:list_work_items): Get the work items on the team's backlog at a specific backlog level.wit_work_item(action:get_batch): Get work item details in batch by their IDs. Use this to fetch fields and relations for backlog items, their parents, and their children in as few calls as possible.
Steps
-
Resolve project and team using the rules above.
-
Call
wit_backlogwith actionlist_work_itemsfor the resolved project and team, using backlog levelMicrosoft.RequirementCategory(the Requirements / Product Backlog Items level). -
From the returned work items, filter to items that meet all of the following criteria:
System.State=ActiveSystem.AssignedTomatches the current userSystem.WorkItemTypeis one of:Product Backlog Item,Bug
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.
- 7d ago First seen · 96 lines · 64 tokens per session scan A 63d0dfedd43a
boards-backlog-summary is a skill published in the GitHub repository microsoft/azure-devops-skills (43 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 64 tokens to every session and 1,098 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
recipe-create-meet-space
Create a Google Meet meeting space and share the join link.
atmos-config
Atmos root configuration: atmos.yaml discovery, precedence, deep merging, basepath, imports, minimal bootstrap, and routing to narrower Atmos skills.
workthreads
SpecStory Workthreads - a weekly work-thread rollup across a team's repos from SpecStory coding histories (any agent - Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, and more). It groups the window's sessions into threads of work per project and labels each new / open / recently closed, so a lead sees what shipped, what is still…
story-readiness
Validate that a story file is implementation-ready. Checks for embedded GDD requirements, ADR references, engine notes, clear acceptance criteria, and no open design questions. Produces READY / NEEDS WORK / BLOCKED verdict with specific gaps. Use when user says 'is this story ready', 'can I start on this story', 'is…
autotask-creator
Rules for automation CRUD from the group-chat commander. The commander does not call mutation tools and does not edit cloud/autotasks files directly. It emits one or more top-level ... containers in its final text; the bus parses and applies them after the turn.
monorepo-management
Master monorepo management with Turborepo, Nx, and pnpm workspaces to build efficient, scalable multi-package repositories with optimized builds and dependency management. Use when setting up monorepos, optimizing builds, or managing shared dependencies.