One search for your own team's files and the public ecosystem. See how real projects write their agent instructions, and bring the good ideas home.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/author-contributions/SKILL.md
Identify all files a specific author contributed to on a branch vs its upstream, tracing code through renames. Use when asked who edited what, what code an author contributed, or to audit authorship before a merge. This skill should be run as a subagent — it performs many git operations and returns a concise table.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/auto-perf-optimize/SKILL.md
Run agent-driven VS Code performance or memory investigations. Use when asked to launch Code OSS, automate a VS Code scenario, run the Chat memory smoke runner, capture renderer heap snapshots, take workflow screenshots, compare run summaries, or drive a repeatable scenario before heap-snapshot analysis.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/azure-pipelines/SKILL.md
Use when validating Azure DevOps pipeline changes for the VS Code build. Covers queueing builds, checking build status, viewing logs, and iterating on pipeline YAML changes without waiting for full CI runs.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/build-champ-triage/SKILL.md
Find out why a build has failed
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/chat-customizations-editor/SKILL.md
Use when working on the Chat Customizations editor — the management UI for agents, skills, instructions, hooks, prompts, MCP servers, and plugins.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/chat-perf/SKILL.md
Run chat perf benchmarks and memory leak checks against the local dev build or any published VS Code version. Use when investigating chat rendering regressions, validating perf-sensitive changes to chat UI, or checking for memory leaks in the chat response pipeline.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/chat-pet-sprite-creation/SKILL.md
Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/codenotify/SKILL.md
codenotify
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/code-oss-logs/SKILL.md
Find and read timestamped process logs from Code OSS dev builds, including main.log, renderer.log, extension host logs, and agenthost.log. For bundles produced by Export Agent Host Debug Logs, use agent-host-logs.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/code-review/SKILL.md
Review code changes for correctness, regressions, and unintended scope. Use when reviewing a pull request, branch, commit, patch, or local diff, including when invoked with /code-review.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/component-fixtures/SKILL.md
Use when creating or updating component fixtures for screenshot testing, or when designing UI components to be fixture-friendly. Covers fixture file structure, theming, service setup, CSS scoping, async rendering, and common pitfalls.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/component/SKILL.md
Help author a component specification for an agent.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/cpu-profile-analysis/SKILL.md
Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-*.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating user timing marks.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/customizations-in-the-agent-host/SKILL.md
Architecture and hard-won debugging lessons for customization enablement (plugins, MCP servers, agents, skills, instructions) in the agent host. Use when changing how customizations are discovered, published, enabled/disabled, or handed to a provider SDK; when a customization shows the wrong enabled state in the UI; or when a disabled MCP server or plugin is still reaching the model.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/design-philosophy/SKILL.md
The VS Code design philosophy — a shared Values→Principles→Moves vocabulary for reasoning about UI in design terms instead of raw pixels. Use when designing, building, reviewing, or giving feedback on any visual surface; when deciding a radius, spacing, type role, icon size, border, color, or motion; or when translating a "this feels off" observation into a concrete, principled fix.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/doc-comments/SKILL.md
Update doc comments
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/experiments/SKILL.md
Use when adding, changing, or reviewing a VS Code A/B experiment, either an experiment-controlled setting or a treatment read with the assignment service, and when deciding whether and where to log an `experimentTrigger` event for a triggered ExP scorecard.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/feature-tryouts/SKILL.md
Use when adding, reviewing, or troubleshooting an interactive release-note Try This experience, including commands, views, editor samples, Chat drafts, guided spotlights, prerequisites, scoped targets, or Agents-window handoff.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/feedback-learning/SKILL.md
Classify and record explicit corrective feedback without turning skills or instructions into append-only knowledge dumps.
MicrosoftSkillmicrosoft/vscode/.github/skills/fix-ci-failures/SKILL.md
Investigate and fix CI failures on a pull request. Use when CI checks fail on a PR branch — covers finding the PR, identifying failed checks, downloading logs and artifacts, extracting the failure cause, and iterating on a fix. Requires the `gh` CLI.
Plain text files in a repository that tell a coding agent how the project works: commands to run, conventions to follow and things to avoid. CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, cursor rules and skills are the common kinds.
CLAUDE.md is read by Claude Code. AGENTS.md is an open format that Codex, Cursor and other agents read. Many projects keep one and point the other at it.
A folder with a SKILL.md that describes one capability, such as filling PDFs or reviewing code. The agent loads it only when the task calls for it.
Your agents already can, over MCP, limited to the files you're allowed to read. Searching them from this page is coming.
