AI Toolbox

A collection of GitHub Copilot skills, agents, instructions, and prompts built to enhance the software development lifecycle. Designed for teams working in VS Code with Copilot on .NET Aspire and Angular monorepos.

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What's in here

Folder	What it does
skills/	Specialist instruction sets Copilot loads on demand to perform a focused task
agents/	Custom agent modes that extend Copilot's built-in Plan/Agent behaviour
instructions/	Always-on rules applied across every Copilot interaction
prompts/	Coding convention references for C# and Angular
mcp-servers/	A lightweight .NET MCP server that tracks skill usage via Application Insights

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Skills

Skills are loaded by Copilot when the task matches their trigger. Each skill lives in its own folder with a SKILL.md that defines intent, process, and output rules.

angular-project-brief

Scans an Angular project's public surface area (components, services, routes, exports) and writes a concise project-brief.md. Other skills consume this brief to avoid full codebase scans during planning.

Triggers: generate brief, update brief, catalog project, bootstrap briefs

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dotnet-project-brief

Same concept for .NET projects in an Aspire solution. Scans public endpoints, services, models, and dependencies and produces a project-brief.md.

Triggers: generate brief, update brief, catalog project, bootstrap briefs

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plan-to-yaml

Takes a researched ticket and writes a structured YAML implementation plan to .copilot/plans/<TICKET_ID>.yaml. The schema preserves confidence gradients, rejected alternatives, assumptions, and open questions — detail that gets silently lost in ad-hoc planning.

Triggers: write a plan, plan this ticket, document the approach, produce a plan file

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synthesize-plans

Reads N plan YAML files from parallel planning sessions and produces two outputs:

• <TICKET_ID>-final.yaml — the clean plan the implementation agent reads
• <TICKET_ID>-synthesis.yaml — the reasoning record (why decisions were made, what conflicted, what was escalated)

Triggers: combine these plans, synthesize the plans, finalize the implementation plan

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angular-tdd

Enforces spec-first TDD for Angular component work. Reads the ticket's plan YAML, identifies every component in scope, and ensures a spec file exists and contains meaningful failing tests before any implementation code is written.

Triggers: write a component, implement a feature, add a component, or any plan that includes Angular component steps

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project-agents-file

Generates a per-project AGENTS.md that tells implementation agents how to write code in a specific project — file placement, base classes, DI conventions, naming, error handling, testing patterns. Different from the project brief (which describes the public API); this file describes how to work inside the project.

Triggers: generate agents file, create AGENTS.md, bootstrap project context

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Agents

YAML Planner

Extends Copilot's native Plan mode. Researches the task, asks clarifying questions, identifies affected projects and constraints, and produces a developer-ready YAML handoff plan using plan-to-yaml. Does not implement the solution — its only output is the plan artifact.

Triggers: plan this ticket, research and plan, write a YAML implementation plan, prepare implementation handoff

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Instructions

These files apply automatically to every Copilot interaction in the workspace.

File	What it enforces
code-conventions.instructions.md	Points agents at the right conventions file (C# or Angular) before writing code
context-gathering.instructions.md	Requires agents to read AGENTS.md and project-brief.md before scoping any work
skill-telemetry.instructions.md	Requires agents to emit started / completed / failed events via the skill telemetry MCP server whenever a skill is activated

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Prompts

Coding convention references consumed by the code-conventions instruction and the project-agents-file skill.

• csharp-conventions.md — interface-first services, Result pattern, IOptions, C# 12 primary constructors, async rules
• angular-conventions.md — standalone components, inject() over constructor injection, @if/@for control flow, reactive forms, component-scoped SCSS

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Skill Telemetry MCP Server

A .NET 9 MCP server (mcp-servers/skill-telemetry/) that exposes a single track_skill_usage tool. When agents activate a skill, they call this tool with skillName, action (started / completed / failed), and optional workspaceContext / agentName. Events are forwarded to Application Insights as custom SkillUsage telemetry.

Setup:

1. Set the APPINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING environment variable.
2. Register the server in your .code-workspace file under settings.mcp.servers.skill-telemetry.

If the environment variable is not set, the tool runs silently without sending events — safe to use in development without a live Application Insights resource.

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Planning Workflow

The skills are designed to work together in sequence:

1. YAML Planner agent
   └─ Researches the ticket, gathers context
   └─ Invokes plan-to-yaml → .copilot/plans/<TICKET_ID>.yaml

2. (Optional) Run multiple planning agents in parallel
   └─ Each produces its own plan YAML
   └─ synthesize-plans → <TICKET_ID>-final.yaml

3. Implementation session
   └─ Reads the final plan YAML
   └─ For Angular components: angular-tdd writes specs first
   └─ Implementation follows the grounded, structured plan

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Getting Started

1. Clone this repo into your VS Code workspace (or reference it from your monorepo).
2. Add the skills/, agents/, instructions/, and prompts/ paths to your Copilot configuration if they are not already auto-discovered.
3. (Optional) Build and register the skill telemetry MCP server.
4. Run generate brief on your projects to bootstrap project-brief.md files.
5. Run generate agents file on each project to bootstrap per-project AGENTS.md files.

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Requirements

• VS Code with GitHub Copilot
• .NET 9 SDK (for the skill telemetry MCP server only)
• Angular + .NET Aspire projects (skills are tailored to this stack, but the planning skills are stack-agnostic)