[Requests and ideas] Global always-on skills for the Copilot desktop app chat
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Description
**Mood:** 😊
**Category:** Requests and ideas
Problem:
The Copilot desktop app doesn't support auto-invocation of personal skills in the chat interface. Skills stored in ~/.copilot/skills/ with descriptions like "Apply this in all interactions" are only auto-discovered in VS Code agent mode, the cloud agent, and Copilot CLI — not in the app's chat.
This means users have to manually invoke their context skill at the start of every new chat session, which is friction that VS Code users don't have (via applyTo: '**' in global prompt files).
Request:
Support a mechanism in the Copilot desktop app chat to mark a personal skill as always-on — either via:
A frontmatter flag in SKILL.md (e.g. always: true)
A global instructions file (e.g. ~/.copilot/instructions.md)
Honouring descriptions like "Apply this in all interactions" as an auto-invoke trigger
Impact:
Users who have personalised Copilot with identity, coding standards, and workflow rules have to re-establish that context on every new chat. This is a significant usability gap vs VS Code.
---
| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| App version | 0.2.14 |
| OS | Windows 10.0.26200 |
| Theme | Noctis Azureus |
| Path | /chat |
| Tenure | Day 1 |
Contributor guide
Research direction
Start by reviewing the desktop app's /chat behavior and the personal skill files under ~/.copilot/skills/, including SKILL.md descriptions. Compare the requested always-on mechanisms and define completion as a supported way for a personal skill or global instructions to apply automatically in new chat sessions.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Domain
- desktop
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100