agentic

Personal GitHub Copilot CLI customizations — instructions and skills — shared across every machine.

Layout

Each top-level directory mirrors a directory of the same name inside the Copilot CLI home directory (~/.copilot, or $COPILOT_HOME if set).

instructions/              *.instructions.md   always-on personal guidance
skills/                    <name>/SKILL.md     on-demand specialized capabilities
install.sh                                     symlinks everything into ~/.copilot
install_instructions.sh                        symlinks only instructions/

agents/, hooks/, and mcp-config.json are also recognized by install.sh; create them here when needed and re-run the script.

Install on a new machine

git clone https://github.com/<owner>/agentic.git ~/Source/repos/agentic
cd ~/Source/repos/agentic
./install.sh

For instructions only, without the skills:

./install_instructions.sh

Both scripts symlink into ~/.copilot. Anything already at a target path is moved to ~/.copilot/.agentic-backup/<timestamp>/ first. Use --dry-run to preview and --force to skip the confirmation prompt. install.sh also accepts an explicit component list, for example ./install.sh instructions skills.

Because the entries are symlinks, editing a file here takes effect immediately — no re-install after a git pull.

The repo is deliberately cloned outside ~/.copilot. That directory also holds credentials (config.json), logs, and session databases, which must never be committed.

Skills

Skill	Description
adr-skill	Create and maintain MADR Architecture Decision Records with required before-and-after Mermaid diagrams.
backlog	Create and maintain lean, milestone-based planning backlogs.
change-review	Run five independent review heads, then verify, merge, and deduplicate their findings.
code-polish	Review code for smells, dead code, duplication, SRP violations, extensibility problems, and bugs, reported as a ranked table.
interactive-brainstorm	Explore open-ended ideas as a user-steered question-and-answer search tree with provisional answers and backtracking.
ppt-master	Create, edit, redesign, and validate editable PowerPoint decks with a Copilot-adapted core workflow.
readme-creation	Create or substantially restructure approachable, source-verified repository README files.
skill-creator	Create, review, and improve Copilot CLI skills, including measuring how reliably a skill triggers.
ui-ux-pro-max	Search and apply local UI/UX design intelligence across web, mobile, and desktop stacks.

skill-creator ships three stdlib-only Python scripts under skills/skill-creator/scripts/:

• validate_skill.py — structure, naming, and frontmatter checks. No quota cost.
• run_eval.py — sends eval queries through copilot -p and watches the JSON event stream to see whether the skill loaded.
• optimize_description.py — proposes better descriptions from eval failures and keeps the one that scores best on held-out queries.

The eval scripts spawn real copilot -p runs, so they consume Copilot quota. validate_skill.py does not.

Adding an instruction file

Instructions are loaded into every session, so keep them short and broadly applicable. Create instructions/<topic>.instructions.md:

---
name: Short Title
description: What this guidance covers.
applyTo: '**'
---

# Short Title

- Guidance goes here.

applyTo is a glob matched against the files in play — use '**' for always-on guidance, or something like '**/*.py' to scope it to a language.

Adding a skill

Skills are loaded only when Copilot judges them relevant, so they are the right home for longer, task-specific procedures. The easiest way to write one is to ask Copilot to use the skill-creator skill:

Use the /skill-creator skill to create a skill for <task>.

Written by hand, a skill is skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md with a lowercase, hyphenated directory name:

---
name: skill-name
description: What the skill does, and when Copilot should use it.
---

Step-by-step instructions for the task.

Add any scripts or reference files alongside SKILL.md; Copilot discovers every file in the skill directory and you can reference them from the instructions.

To pre-approve tools the skill needs, add an allowed-tools frontmatter field. Only list shell or bash for skills whose scripts you have read and trust, since doing so removes the per-command confirmation prompt.

After adding a skill, run /skills reload in an active session, or start a new one. Verify with copilot skill list.

Instructions vs. skills

Use instructions for guidance that applies to nearly every task, and skills for detailed procedures that should only be loaded when relevant.