dotnet/skills

.NET Agent Skills

This repository contains the .NET team's curated set of portable skills and host-specific custom agents for coding agents. For information about the Agent Skills standard, see agentskills.io.

[!TIP]

Compare skill value: Open the Skill Value dashboard

See token use, elapsed time, activation, and not-passed rates by plugin, skill,

executor model, and judge model.

Plugin support is component-specific:

• Skills and MCP servers are the portable component types defined by

Agent Plugins 1.0.

• Files under agents/*.agent.md use GitHub Copilot custom-agent conventions. They are not

installed as native OpenAI Codex agents.

• Native Codex agents use .codex/agents/*.toml. This repository does not currently ship them

because Codex plugin installation does not place agent files in those discovery locations.

What's Included

| Plugin | Description | |--------|-------------| | dotnet | High-level .NET development skills plus C# language server (LSP) integration for hosts that support it. | | dotnet-advanced | Collection of .NET skills for handling specific .NET tasks for special scenarios. | | dotnet-data | Skills for .NET data access and Entity Framework related tasks. | | dotnet-diag | Skills for .NET performance investigations, debugging, and incident analysis. | | dotnet-msbuild | Comprehensive MSBuild and .NET build skills: failure diagnosis, performance optimization, code quality, and modernization. | | dotnet-nuget | NuGet and .NET package management: dependency management and modernization. | | dotnet-upgrade | Skills for migrating and upgrading .NET projects across framework versions, language features, and compatibility targets. | | dotnet-maui | Skills for .NET MAUI development: environment setup, diagnostics, and troubleshooting. | | dotnet-ai | AI and ML skills for .NET: technology selection, LLM integration, agentic workflows, RAG pipelines, MCP, and classic ML with ML.NET. | | dotnet-template-engine | .NET Template Engine skills: template discovery, project scaffolding, and template authoring. | | dotnet-test | Skills for running, generating, analyzing, and improving .NET tests: test execution, filtering, platform detection, coverage, testability, and MSTest workflows. | | dotnet-test-migration | Skills and a GitHub Copilot orchestrator agent for migrating .NET test frameworks and platforms: MSTest and xUnit version upgrades, xUnit-to-MSTest conversion, and VSTest to Microsoft.Testing.Platform. | | dotnet-aspnetcore | ASP.NET Core web development skills including middleware, endpoints, real-time communication, and API patterns. | | dotnet-blazor | Skills for Blazor development: component authoring, interactivity, and web application patterns. | | dotnet-winforms | Skills for Windows Forms development: project setup, UI design, data binding, accessibility, and modern .NET practices. | | dotnet11 | Skills for new .NET 11 APIs and language features. |

Agentic Workflows

Reusable GitHub Agentic Workflows are published under agentic-workflows/. Install the complete collection with gh aw add-wizard dotnet/skills/agentic-workflows@main, or install an individual package using the command in its README.

Installation

🚀 Plugins - Copilot CLI / Claude Code

1. Launch Copilot CLI or Claude Code 2. Add the marketplace:

   /plugin marketplace add dotnet/skills
   

3. Install a plugin:

   /plugin install @dotnet-agent-skills
   

4. Restart to load the new plugins 5. View available skills:

   /skills
   

6. View available agents:

   /agents
   

7. Update plugin (on demand):

   /plugin update @dotnet-agent-skills
   

VS Code / VS Code Insiders (Preview)

[!IMPORTANT]

VS Code plugin support is a preview feature and subject to change. You may need to enable it first.

// settings.json
{
  "chat.plugins.enabled": true,
  "chat.plugins.marketplaces": ["dotnet/skills"]
}

Once configured, type /plugins in Copilot Chat or use the @agentPlugins filter in Extensions to browse and install plugins from the marketplace.

Cursor

This repository is a Cursor plugin marketplace. You can discover and install published plugins directly in Cursor:

1. Open the marketplace panel in Cursor 2. Search for .NET or browse cursor.com/marketplace 3. Install the desired plugins

For local development or unpublished changes, import plugins from a local checkout:

1. Copy or symlink your local checkout to ~/.cursor/plugins/local/dotnet-agent-skills 2. Restart Cursor or run Developer: Reload Window

Codex CLI

Skills in this repository follow the agentskills.io open standard and are compatible with OpenAI Codex.

Codex plugin installs expose the skills and any Codex-compatible MCP servers declared by the plugin. They do not expose the repository's GitHub Copilot .agent.md files, their static handoffs, or host-specific LSP declarations. Use Codex's built-in dynamic subagent delegation instead. Native Codex custom agents are a separate configuration mechanism documented under multi-agent workflows. OpenAI Agents SDK handoffs are an application-level transfer between SDK-defined agents; they are separate from both Copilot's static UI handoff metadata and Codex plugin or custom-agent packaging.

Plugin marketplace (recommended)

Codex CLI v0.121.0 and later supports a plugin marketplace. This repository ships a Codex-native marketplace manifest at .agents/plugins/marketplace.json, so you can register dotnet/skills as a marketplace and install plugins from it directly.

1. Add the marketplace:

   codex plugin marketplace add dotnet/skills
   

2. Launch Codex and open the plugin browser:

   /plugins
   

3. Browse the dotnet-agent-skills tab and install the desired plugins. 4. Update plugins on demand:

   codex plugin marketplace upgrade dotnet-agent-skills
   

Individual skills

You can also install individual skills using the skill-installer CLI with the GitHub URL:

$ skill-installer install https://github.com/dotnet/skills/tree/main/plugins//skills/

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for contribution guidelines and how to add a new plugin.

License

See LICENSE for details.