.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.
dotnet11	Skills for new .NET 11 APIs and language features.

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.