Visual Studio Code is a code editor that supports editing, navigating, understanding, debugging, and extending software projects. Developers use it for the edit-build-debug cycle, and the catalogue add-ons provide skills, instructions, and agents for working within the editor.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to microsoft/vscode. 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/vscode/main/.github/skills/otel/SKILL.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/vscodeWrote 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/vscode/otel)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/vscode/otel"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/vscode/otel/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/vscode/otel"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/vscode/otel.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- Snyk pass
- NVIDIA SkillSpector warn
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium
These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →
- medium MCP Rug Pull · line 242 npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
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 | $0.00045 | $0.02213 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00018 | $0.00885 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00009 | $0.00443 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00221 |
Grade A, and why
otel 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 1mo 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 — 200 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
OpenTelemetry in VS Code
Start by identifying the execution surface. VS Code has separate OTel pipelines with different owners and configuration:
| Surface | Process and producer | Configuration | Authoritative VS Code document |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agent Host sessions (Copilot, Claude, Codex) | Provider-native telemetry routed by the Agent Host utility process | chat.agentHost.otel.* |
src/vs/platform/agentHost/OTEL.md |
| Local Copilot Chat | Copilot Chat extension host and IOTelService |
github.copilot.chat.otel.* |
extensions/copilot/docs/monitoring/agent_monitoring.md |
Do not combine these pipelines or assume that a setting for one configures another.
Current architecture
Agent Host is the current execution architecture for Copilot, Claude, and Codex agent sessions. It owns routing, optional trace interception and SQLite persistence, resource normalization, and cross-provider trace context. Each provider owns its native instrumentation.
The extension-host Copilot CLI source remains as a fallback when Agent Host is unavailable and to support legacy-session migration. It is normally hidden when Agent Host is available and is not the current Agent Host architecture. Do not use it as a model for new work.
Local Copilot Chat remains a separate user-visible extension-host surface. Its foreground chat, LLM, tool, hook, metric, and event instrumentation continues to use IOTelService under extensions/copilot/src/platform/otel/.
Runtime version discipline
Copilot's native OTel signal contract lives in github/copilot-agent-runtime, not in VS Code's TypeScript attribute constants. Before auditing or changing the integration:
- Read the versions of
@github/copilot-sdkand@github/copilotfrom the rootpackage-lock.json. - Resolve the matching immutable runtime tag and commit.
- Read the runtime monitoring reference and implementation at that revision.
- Use runtime
mainonly after confirming that the relevant files are unchanged from the bundled revision.
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.
- 1mo ago Changed · -73 lines · -49 tokens per session 6acc79f3864f
- 1mo ago First seen · 273 lines · 94 tokens per session scan A 329eb0f5a1c3
otel is a skill published in the GitHub repository microsoft/vscode (194,219 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 45 tokens to every session and 2,213 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. 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
cyrene-plan-mode
A planning guide for Cyrene’s Plan Mode, used before code or file changes are made. It helps turn a broad request into an agreed implementation plan based on the project’s actual code and constraints.
cyrene-plugin-dev
A guide for developing runtime plugins for Cyrene, including plugins that add tools, windows, events, live context, or connections to services. Cyrene is the host application that runs these plugins.
cyrene-exam-paper
A method for creating formal exams from a learning plan, then keeping the questions, answers, grading, and review separate. It maps learned topics to skills and suitable question types.
cyrene-obsidian-workspace
A set of rules for an agent working with an Obsidian vault, a folder of linked Markdown notes. It defines where materials, notes, exercises, templates, and progress files belong and how they may be edited.
cyrene-work-hygiene
A Work-mode rulebook for organizing projects that create, arrange, or deliver several files.
cyrene-diagram
A design guide for making static SVG learning cards: small diagrams or reference cards rendered as images. It explains when to use a card instead of Mermaid, a text-based diagram format, and sets layout, color, size, and safety rules.