☁️ Azure Agent Skills

🚀 Agentic Skills for Azure Development

Supercharge your AI coding assistant with curated, production-ready skills for Microsoft Azure. Works seamlessly with:

🟣 Claude Code | 🔵 Gemini CLI | 🟢 Codex CLI | 🔴 Antigravity IDE | 🩵 GitHub Copilot | 🟠 Cursor | ⚪ OpenCode | 🌸 AdaL CLI

Azure Agent Skills is a curated collection of high-quality agentic skills specifically designed for Azure cloud development. These skills follow the Agent Skills open standard and work seamlessly with modern AI coding assistants to provide expert-level guidance on Azure services.

📍 Table of Contents

• 🚀 New Here? Start Here!
• ⚡ One-Click Plugin Install
• 🔌 Compatibility & Invocation
• 📦 Features & Categories
• 🎁 Curated Collections (Bundles)
• 📚 Browse All Skills
• 🛠️ Installation
• 🧠 How to Use
• 📖 Agent Skills Documentation
• 🤝 How to Contribute
• ⚖️ License

🚀 New Here? Start Here!

1. 🐣 What is this?

AI Agents (like GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, or Cursor) are smart, but they lack specific, up-to-date knowledge about Azure services. Skills are folders containing markdown instructions, scripts, and resources that teach AI agents how to work with Azure services correctly, every time.

💡 Skills are reusable, filesystem-based resources that provide AI agents with domain-specific expertise. They load on-demand and eliminate the need to repeatedly provide the same guidance across conversations.

2. 📚 How These Skills Are Created

Microsoft Learn documentation already encodes decisions, procedures, best practices, and constraints — exactly what agents need to act effectively. Rather than relying on RAG to retrieve and summarize raw text every time, we pre-compile this knowledge into structured, executable skills.

Documentation as Pre-Built Skills: Many effective agent skills are not new inventions — they are structured patterns, workflows, and decision logic that already exist in documentation. Consider what Learn content contains:

• API patterns and usage guidance
• Service configuration procedures
• Platform best practices and constraints
• Troubleshooting decision trees
• Security and compliance requirements

Our approach:

1. Extract high-value, task-oriented capabilities from Learn content
2. Classify by purpose (limits, troubleshooting, configuration, architecture, etc.)
3. Reveal only when relevant to the user's intent

The knowledge is pre-compiled into actions, choices, and guardrails the agent can use directly — not raw text that needs interpretation.

Each skill provides:

• 📚 Curated documentation links organized by topic
• 🔗 Direct access to Microsoft Learn content
• 🎯 Best practices and architecture patterns
• ⚠️ Troubleshooting guides and common pitfalls

3. ⚡️ Quick Start

A short path to getting started — full installation details are in the 🛠️ Installation section below.

� Plugin install (recommended): VS Code, Claude Code, and Codex can install everything as a single agent plugin — no cloning or copying.

• VS Code: Command Palette → Chat: Install Plugin From Source → paste https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/agent-skills
• Claude Code: /plugin marketplace add MicrosoftDocs/agent-skills, then /plugin install azure-agent-skills@microsoft-agent-skills
• Codex: codex plugin marketplace add MicrosoftDocs/agent-skills, then install azure-agent-skills from /plugins

👉 See ⚡ One-Click Plugin Install for full steps and the marketplace options.

🛠️ Other assistants (manual):

1. Clone the repo:

   git clone https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/agent-skills.git
   

2. Copy the contents of the skills/ folder to your AI assistant's skills path (see 🛠️ Installation for the destination table and important notes).

3. VS Code users (manual mode): enable chat.agent.skills in Settings so the editor will load skills.

4. Start coding — your AI assistant will automatically discover and use the installed skills.

4. 🧠 How Skills Work

Skills use progressive disclosure to efficiently load content only when needed:

1. Level 1 - Discovery: Agent reads skill name and description from YAML frontmatter
2. Level 2 - Instructions: When triggered, agent loads the full SKILL.md content
3. Level 3 - Resources: Agent accesses additional files (scripts, examples) as needed

Once installed, just ask your AI assistant naturally:

"Help me set up Azure Functions with Durable Functions"

"What are the best practices for Azure Container Apps?"

"How do I configure Azure API Management?"

The skills will automatically provide context from official Microsoft documentation.

⚡ One-Click Plugin Install

🚀 Recommended. This repository ships as a ready-to-use agent plugin with native manifests for every major assistant. Install once and all 193+ skills are available — no cloning, no copying, no manual skills/ setup.

🟦 VS Code

Option 1 — Install directly from source

1. Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P).
2. Run Chat: Install Plugin From Source.
3. Paste the repository URL:

   https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/agent-skills
   

4. VS Code clones and installs the plugin. All skills now appear in Chat: Configure Skills.

Option 2 — Add it as a plugin marketplace

Register this repo as a marketplace to browse and install (and get updates) from the Extensions view.

1. Add the repository to your chat.plugins.marketplaces setting:

   // settings.json
   "chat.plugins.marketplaces": [
     "MicrosoftDocs/agent-skills"
   ]
   

2. Open the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X) and search @agentPlugins.
3. Find azure-agent-skills and select Install.

⚠️ Preview feature. Agent plugins require chat.plugins.enabled to be set to true. This setting may be managed by your organization. If you don't see the option, ask your administrator or use the manual installation below.

🟣 Claude Code

Claude Code installs this repo as a plugin through its marketplace. From within Claude Code:

1. Add this repository as a marketplace:

   /plugin marketplace add MicrosoftDocs/agent-skills
   

2. Install the plugin:

   /plugin install azure-agent-skills@microsoft-agent-skills
   

3. Run /reload-plugins (or restart Claude Code) to activate. All skills are now available.

🟢 OpenAI Codex

Codex installs this repo as a plugin through its plugin browser. From the Codex CLI:

1. Add this repository as a marketplace:

   codex plugin marketplace add MicrosoftDocs/agent-skills
   

2. Open the plugin browser and install azure-agent-skills from the microsoft-agent-skills marketplace:

   /plugins
   

3. Restart Codex if the skills don't appear immediately.

💡 One repo, every tool. The same repository ships native plugin manifests for each ecosystem — plugin.json (VS Code / Copilot CLI), .claude-plugin/ (Claude Code), and .codex-plugin/ + .agents/plugins/ (Codex) — so a single install gets you all skills wherever you work.

🔌 Compatibility & Invocation

These skills follow the Agent Skills open standard (SKILL.md format) and work with any AI coding assistant that supports agentic skills.