vs-extensibility-skills

Visual Studio IDE Agent Skills

Agent skills for Visual Studio IDE extension development. These skills help AI coding agents (GitHub Copilot, Claude, etc.) build, debug, and maintain Visual Studio extensions using the correct APIs and best practices.

Each skill covers all three extensibility approaches:

• VisualStudio.Extensibility — the recommended out-of-process model
• VSIX Community Toolkit — community helpers that simplify common tasks
• VSSDK — the low-level, in-process legacy APIs

Getting started

Option 1 — Use the GitHub Node extension in Visual Studio (recommended)

The GitHub Node extension lets you register this repository as an Agent Marketplace and install skills directly from Solution Explorer.

1. Install the extension

   • In Visual Studio, go to Extensions → Manage Extensions
   • Search for GitHub Node and install it (requires VS 2022 17.0+)
   • Restart Visual Studio

2. Register this repository as a marketplace

   • Open a solution in Visual Studio
   • Right-click the GitHub node in Solution Explorer and select Manage Marketplaces
   • Click Add and enter:

     madskristensen/vs-agent-plugins
     

   • The extension clones the repository locally and caches it for 7 days

3. Install skills into your project

   • Right-click the GitHub node (or a subfolder like skills) and choose Add Skill
   • In the template dialog, select vs-agent-plugins from the provider dropdown
   • Browse and preview the available skills, then click Create to add the selected skill to your repository's .github/skills/ folder

Once installed, Copilot in Visual Studio will automatically pick up the skills from the .github folder and use them when you ask it to help with extension development.

Option 2 — Install in Codex

codex plugin marketplace add madskristensen/vs-agent-plugins
codex

Open /plugins, select the Visual Studio IDE Agent Skills marketplace, and install vs-agent-plugins. Start a new thread after installing so Codex loads the skills.

Option 3 — Install in Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add madskristensen/vs-agent-plugins
/plugin install vs-extensibility-skills@vs-agent-plugins

Start a new conversation after installing so Claude Code loads the skills.

Option 4 — Copy skills manually to your repository

No extension required. Copy the skills you need directly into your repo's .github folder:

1. Clone this repository (or download it as a ZIP):

   git clone https://github.com/madskristensen/vs-agent-plugins.git
   

2. Copy the skills folder into your project's .github directory:

   your-repo/
   └── .github/
       └── skills/
           ├── adding-commands/
           │   └── SKILL.md
           ├── adding-tool-windows/
           │   └── SKILL.md
           ├── handling-async-threading/
           │   └── SKILL.md
           └── ... (any skills you need)
   

   You can copy individual skill folders or the entire skills/ directory — only include what's relevant to your project.

3. Commit the .github/skills/ folder to your repository. GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio will automatically discover and use the skills when assisting with extension development tasks.

Tip: You don't need to copy all skills. Pick only the ones that match the extensibility areas you're working on (e.g., adding-commands, adding-tool-windows, handling-async-threading).

Available skills

Skill	Description
adding-codelens-indicators	Add CodeLens indicators above code elements
adding-commands	Register and handle commands in VS extensions
adding-context-menus	Add items to right-click context menus
adding-editor-adornments	Add visual adornments to the text editor
adding-editor-classifiers	Classify text spans for syntax coloring
adding-editor-margins	Add custom margins to the text editor
adding-intellisense-completion	Provide IntelliSense completion items
adding-lightbulb-actions	Add light bulb (quick action) suggestions
adding-options-settings	Create options pages and manage settings
adding-quickinfo-tooltips	Show QuickInfo tooltips on hover
adding-solution-explorer-nodes	Add custom nodes to Solution Explorer
adding-suggested-actions	Provide suggested actions in the editor
adding-textmate-grammars	Register TextMate grammars for syntax highlighting
adding-tool-window-search	Add search functionality to tool windows
adding-tool-window-toolbars	Add toolbars to tool windows
adding-tool-windows	Create custom tool windows
controlling-command-visibility	Control when commands are visible/enabled