How to use GitHub Copilot Agent Skills in Visual Studio

GitHub Copilot Agent Skills are reusable folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that Copilot can load automatically based on your prompts. Unlike broad custom instructions, skills are specialized playbooks for on-demand tasks like running test suites, formatting code comments, or following deployment checklists. Skills follow an open standard and can be placed in project-scoped or personal directories. Each skill requires a SKILL.md file with YAML frontmatter and Markdown instructions. Visual Studio 2026 (March 2026 update) supports automatic skill discovery. Community skill repositories like github/awesome-copilot, anthropics/skills, and skills.sh provide pre-built options installable via GitHub CLI or npx.