skillDirectories Does Not Take Effect at Repo Level
- Dominant language
- Shell
- Stars
- 11.2k
- Forks
- 1.9k
- Avg merge
- 14h 16m
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 6
Description
### Describe the feature or problem you'd like to solve
Working with skills spread across multiple repos or in subdirectories of mono-repos are currently not possible to include without a lot of copying around and cleaning up.
### Proposed solution
Support `skillDirectories` setting both in `.github/copilot/settings.json` and `.github/copilot/settings.local.json` so that we can customise which skills are exposed based on the type of work, the sub-path in a mono-repo and when working across multiple repos. All three scenarios are fairly common in a medium to large enterprise.
### Example prompts or workflows
Let's say I'm working on a frontend-repo and I notice that the backend is not adhering to the contract. I'd like from my frontend-repo to invoke the following skill that lives in backend-repo:
`/investigate-backlog to see if there's a bug on data path of controller Foo where it returns a string instead of a guid`
It wouldn't make sense for me to have it in my user settings since it's dependent upon the type of work I'm doing and the repo I'm currently using. If I duplicate the skill in frontend-repo's .github folder, then I can't be sure when backend folks update something on their end and I get outdated results.
### Additional context
A bit similar to the following issues but not the same IMO:
- #3688
- #3505
Contributor guide
Research direction
Start by tracing how skillDirectories is currently read from user settings and how repository settings are loaded. Compare the behavior of .github/copilot/settings.json and .github/copilot/settings.local.json, including skills in other repositories and monorepo subdirectories. Done means both repository-level files can customize the exposed skill directories without copying skills.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- shell
- Domain
- cli, developer-experience
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 48/100