.NET Agent Skills

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

What's Included

Plugin	Description
dotnet	Collection of core .NET skills for handling common .NET coding tasks.
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, diagnosing, and migrating .NET tests: test execution, filtering, platform detection, and MSTest workflows.
dotnet-aspnet	ASP.NET Core web development skills including middleware, endpoints, real-time communication, and API patterns.

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.

Codex CLI

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

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>

⚡ Agentic Workflows

Some plugins include GitHub Agentic Workflow templates for CI/CD automation:

1. Install the gh aw CLI extension
2. Copy the desired workflow .md files and the shared/ directory to your repository's .github/workflows/
3. Compile and commit:

   gh aw compile
   

4. Commit both the .md and generated .lock.yml files

Contributing

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

License

See LICENSE for details.