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Access to this page requires authorization. You can try changing directories.
After adding skills to your agent, you can edit and delete them from the Build tab. Keeping your agent's skills organized and up to date ensures the best user experience.
View your agent's skills
Open your agent in Copilot Studio.
Select the Build tab.
In the components panel, the Skills section shows the skills you added to your agent.
Edit a skill
You can edit a skill directly from its configuration panel.
Select the skill you want to edit to open its configuration panel.
Update any of the following elements:
- Name: The skill's identifier. Use only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. Don't start or end the name with a hyphen.
- Description: What the skill does and when it should be activated.
- Instructions: The Markdown instructions that guide the agent's behavior.
Select Save to apply your changes.
Note
For agents powered by the Customer Conversation harness, editing a Topic-type skill opens the topic editing canvas instead of the skill's name/description/instructions panel, since a Topic skill's behavior is defined by its underlying topic. For details, see Create a skill for an agent (Customer Conversation).
Tip
After editing a skill, test your agent in the Preview tab to verify the changes work as expected.
Delete a skill
In the components panel, select the X icon next to the skill you want to delete. A message prompts you to confirm your intention.
Confirm the deletion in the dialog that appears.
Note
Deleting a skill removes it permanently from this agent. If you might need the skill later and your agent is powered by the GitHub Copilot harness, download it first.
Browse and consume marketplace skills (preview)
Note
The harness used to build this agent uses usage-based billing. Using, building, testing, and evaluating agents might consume Copilot Credits. Learn more in Overview of usage-based billing.
[This section is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]
You can browse and add skills shared through the marketplace to your agent. The skills available to you are the ones shared by admins or skill owners. General plugin support in Copilot Studio isn't available yet.
Important
This article contains Microsoft Copilot Studio preview documentation and is subject to change.
Preview features aren't meant for production use and may have restricted functionality. These features are available before an official release so that you can get early access and provide feedback.
If you're building a production-ready agent, see Microsoft Copilot Studio Overview.
To add a marketplace skill to your agent:
Open your agent in Copilot Studio.
Select the Build tab.
Select the + icon next to Skills, and then select Browse skills (preview).
Browse the marketplace skills available to you.
Select the skill you want to add.
On the skill details page, select Add.
When you add a marketplace skill, the agent gets a snapshot of the skill while maintaining a reference to the original marketplace skill. You receive a skill update notification when you open an agent that uses an older version of a marketplace skill. You can choose to update to the new version by selecting the update button for the skill.
Share a skill through the marketplace (preview)
[This section is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]
You can share a skill you created so that you and other people in your organization can use it across Copilot Studio agents and other supported experiences. You can keep the skill private or share it with specific people or groups in your organization.
Important
This article contains Microsoft Copilot Studio preview documentation and is subject to change.
Preview features aren't meant for production use and may have restricted functionality. These features are available before an official release so that you can get early access and provide feedback.
If you're building a production-ready agent, see Microsoft Copilot Studio Overview.
Note
When you edit and change a skill that you already shared, share the skill again to make the latest version available to those you previously shared it with.
To share a skill:
Select the skill you want to share to open the skill configuration panel.
Select the three dots (…) and then select Share.
On the details page, select Share in the upper-right corner.
In the Share dialog, choose who can use the skill:
- Only you: Keeps the skill private to your account.
- Specific users or groups in your organization: Lets you add people or groups by name or email address. People and groups you add can use the skill.
Select Apply to make the skill available to the people or groups you selected.
Troubleshoot skills that don't load
If a skill you added doesn't appear in the components panel after you save, or the agent behaves as though the skill isn't installed, the skill probably failed a load-time check. Copilot Studio still loads the rest of your agent when this happens, but the affected skill is skipped.
The most common reasons a skill is skipped and the fix for each:
| Reason | What it means | How to fix it |
|---|---|---|
| Invalid YAML frontmatter | The --- block at the top of SKILL.md isn't valid YAML. |
Quote string values that contain a colon or other YAML metacharacter (for example, description: "My: skill"). Verify the frontmatter is a mapping of key: value pairs. |
Missing name |
The frontmatter doesn't have a non-empty name: value. |
Add name: <skill-name> to the frontmatter. |
Missing description |
The frontmatter doesn't have a non-empty description: value. |
Add description: <one-line summary> to the frontmatter. |
| Description too long | The effective description is longer than the model-facing catalog can accept. |
Shorten the description to a single line that summarizes the skill's purpose. |
| Duplicate skill name | Two skills in the same agent use the same folder name. | Rename one of the skills so each has a unique name. |
Unreadable SKILL.md |
The SKILL.md file couldn't be read, usually because of a non-UTF-8 file encoding. |
Save SKILL.md as UTF-8 without a byte-order mark, then upload the skill again. |
| Resource file wasn't written | One or more supporting files in the skill package couldn't be written. | Re-export the skill package, verify each file is present and readable, then upload again. |
| Skill package rejected | The skill package failed a structural validation check while it was being installed. | Re-export the package from a working editor and try again. If the problem repeats with a package that used to work, contact your administrator. |
Skills whose supporting files were partially written still load, but the agent might behave differently at runtime because some of the referenced content is missing. Re-upload the package to restore the full set of files.