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/poorgramer-zack/copilot-cli-things/skill-developmentnpx skills add Poorgramer-Zack/copilot-cli-things --skill skill-developmentgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Poorgramer-Zack/copilot-cli-thingsWhat 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 | $0.00056 | $0.04998 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00028 | $0.02499 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00011 | $0.01000 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00006 | $0.00500 |
Grade A, and why
Skill Development 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.
This is a copy
86% identical to Skill Development — 60 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 632 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Skill Development for Copilot CLI Plugins
Create effective skills for Copilot CLI plugins following best practices for structure, progressive disclosure, and trigger matching.
About Skills
Skills are modular, self-contained packages that extend Copilot's capabilities with specialized knowledge, workflows, and tools — "onboarding guides" that transform Copilot from a general-purpose agent into a domain-specialized agent with procedural knowledge no model fully possesses.
What Skills Provide
- Specialized workflows - Multi-step procedures for specific domains
- Tool integrations - Instructions for working with specific file formats or APIs
- Domain expertise - Company-specific knowledge, schemas, business logic
- Bundled resources - Scripts, references, and assets for complex and repetitive tasks
Anatomy of a Skill
Every skill consists of a required SKILL.md file and optional bundled resources:
skill-name/
├── SKILL.md (required)
│ ├── YAML frontmatter metadata (required)
│ │ ├── name: (required)
│ │ └── description: (required)
│ └── Markdown instructions (required)
└── Bundled Resources (optional)
├── scripts/ - Executable code (Python/Bash/etc.)
├── references/ - Documentation intended to be loaded into context as needed
└── assets/ - Files used in output (templates, icons, fonts, etc.)
SKILL.md (required)
Metadata Quality: The name and description in YAML frontmatter determine when Copilot will use the skill. Be specific about what the skill does and when to use it. Use the third-person (e.g. "This skill should be used when..." instead of "Use this skill when...").
Bundled Resources (optional)
Scripts (scripts/)
Executable code (Python/Bash/etc.) for tasks that require deterministic reliability or are repeatedly rewritten.
- When to include: When the same code is being rewritten repeatedly or deterministic reliability is needed
- Example:
scripts/rotate_pdf.pyfor PDF rotation tasks - Benefits: Token efficient, deterministic, may be executed without loading into context
- Note: Scripts may still need to be read by Copilot for patching or environment-specific adjustments
What ships with it
10 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.
- examples/plugin-commands.md 13 KB
- examples/simple-commands.md 8.5 KB
- references/advanced-workflows.md 13 KB
- references/documentation-patterns.md 15 KB
- references/frontmatter-reference.md 9.1 KB
- references/interactive-commands.md 20 KB
- references/marketplace-considerations.md 16 KB
- references/plugin-features-reference.md 14 KB
- references/skill-creator-original.md 11 KB
- references/testing-strategies.md 14 KB
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 · 632 lines · 56 tokens per session scan A eea1fd08ee8f
Skill Development is a skill published in the GitHub repository Poorgramer-Zack/copilot-cli-things (2 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 56 tokens to every session and 4,998 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 86% identical to Skill Development, differing in 60 lines, and is treated as a copy.
Other skills, from other repositories
retrospective
Stage A of /prflow:retrospective-weekly: analyze one non-clean PR from its pre-fetched context bundle and return a retrospective entry as JSON. Invoked as a subagent — do not call it directly.
subagent-governance
Delegation admissibility governance for a parent orchestrator. Use when deciding whether to launch, sequence, replace, or accept one or more delegated child runs while preserving role fit, plan-backed worker contracts, one-writer isolation, bounded retry safety, and reviewer finding disposition. Covers admissibility…
skill-creator
Use when you want to create a new SKILL.md file — describe a workflow and this skill generates a properly structured, frontmatter-complete SKILL.md that follows this repository's conventions.
Skill Builder
Create new Claude Code Skills with proper YAML frontmatter, progressive disclosure structure, and complete directory organization. Use when you need to build custom skills for specific workflows, generate skill templates, or understand the Claude Skills specification.
speckit-init
Scaffold a Spec Kit (spec-driven development) project for GitHub Copilot by running specify init --integration copilot --integration-options="--skills". USE FOR: starting a new spec-kit project, bootstrapping spec-driven development in an existing repo, installing spec-kit templates/scripts/commands for Copilot. DO…
speckit-bundle
Discover, install, and author Spec Kit bundles via specify bundle. USE FOR: searching/showing/listing bundles, installing/updating/removing a bundle (a curated set of extensions/presets/integrations/workflows), validating a bundle manifest, building a distributable bundle artifact, initializing a project and…