microsoft / microsoft/GitHub-Copilot-for-Azure

Replace microsoft-foundry skill Tracing Insights API fetch with a script

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@tmeschter is already working on this.

Since Jul 6, 2026.

microsoft-foundry skills untriaged
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Description

## Summary

Copilot has identified a portion of a skill that is a good candidate for replacement with a script.

The candidate is the **Tracing Insights API fetch** in the `microsoft-foundry` skill (`foundry-agent/trace/references/tracing-insights-api.md`) — a token → URL-encode → POST → parse → relatedSpans-loop REST flow with no agent branching.

## Candidate description

To fetch tracing insights and the traces they flag, the skill runs a deterministic REST sequence:

1. `az account get-access-token --resource https://ai.azure.com` to acquire a token.
2. URL-encode `agent` and `projectId` (the latter contains slashes) and assemble the `:insights` URI with required query params.
3. `POST` with the mandatory empty `{}` body (omitting it returns 400) and parse the JSON.
4. For each `operationId` in `relatedSpans[]`, run the fixed KQL to pull input/output/tokens for that trace.

This is a strong script candidate because it is:
- **Fully deterministic with no branching** — the pitfalls it documents (empty body required, projectId must be URL-encoded, region-agnostic `eastus2` default) are exactly the mechanical detail a script encodes once.
- **A fixed loop** over a known `relatedSpans` list.
- **Sharing a recurring token idiom** — `az account get-access-token --resource https://ai.azure.com --query accessToken -o tsv` also appears in `troubleshoot.md` (L63) and `direct-code-deployment.md` (L253), suggesting a shared auth helper.

**Sketch — `fetch-tracing-insights.{sh,ps1}`:**
- **Input:** `--agent`, `--project-id`, optional `--region` (default `eastus2`), optional `--analysis-window`.
- **Output:** the parsed insights plus, for each related span, the user query / agent response / token usage.

> Choosing the analysis window and interpreting/triaging the returned insights (severity, evaluator, shift magnitude) and deciding which traces to drill into stay in prose. The fetch + relatedSpans expansion is mechanical.

## Affected file and lines

- [`foundry-agent/trace/references/tracing-insights-api.md` — token + encode + POST insights (L30–L47)](https://github.com/microsoft/GitHub-Copilot-for-Azure/blob/3890cbfb65c548ce8daa96cabd1d8de63f7bbcca/plugin/skills/microsoft-foundry/foundry-agent/trace/references/tracing-insights-api.md#L30-L47)
- [`foundry-agent/trace/references/tracing-insights-api.md` — relatedSpans trace pull (L77–L90)](https://github.com/microsoft/GitHub-Copilot-for-Azure/blob/3890cbfb65c548ce8daa96cabd1d8de63f7bbcca/plugin/skills/microsoft-foundry/foundry-agent/trace/references/tracing-insights-api.md#L77-L90)

## Next steps

1. **Evaluate the candidate** — confirm the steps are stable and parameterizable, and that the script captures everything the skill needs.
2. **Create both a bash _and_ a PowerShell version** of the script so the skill works across platforms.
3. **Run integration tests** to verify the scripts behave correctly and the skill still completes end-to-end.

## Background Information

### Why replace regular steps with scripts

Replacing a regular, well-defined series of steps with a script can:

- **Reduce token usage** — the skill no longer needs to spell out each command and parse large command output inline; the agent invokes one script and reads a compact result.
- **Improve reliability** — the logic is written and tested once, instead of being re-derived by the agent on every run.
- **Improve determinism** — the same inputs always produce the same steps and output, removing run-to-run variation.
- **Improve speed of execution** — a single script call replaces multiple round-trips of command generation, execution, and large-output parsing.

### Authoring notes for the scripts

- **Reference scripts with markdown links**, not just a bare path to the script file.
- **Include examples** in the skill showing how to run each script (sample invocation with arguments).
- **Briefly explain what each script does** where it is referenced.
- **The script output should explain what it did**, so the agent and user can understand the result without re-inspecting raw command output.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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