.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 <plugin>@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 <plugin>@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/<plugin>/skills/<skill-name>

Contributing

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

License

See LICENSE for details.