About GitHub Copilot plugins

Plugins provide a way to distribute custom Copilot functionality. You can use a plugin to add a preconfigured set of capabilities to Copilot, including Copilot pour CLI and Agent cloud Copilot.

What is a plugin?

A distributable package that extends Copilot's functionality.
A bundle of components in a single installable unit.

What plugins contain

A plugin can contain some or all of the following components:

Custom agents — Specialized AI assistants (*.agent.md files in agents/)
Skills — Discrete callable capabilities (skills subdirectories in skills/, containing a SKILL.md file)
Hooks — Event handlers that intercept agent behavior (a hooks.json file in the plugin root, or in hooks/)
MCP server configurations — Model Context Protocol integrations (a .mcp.json file in the plugin root, or an mcp.json file in .github/)
LSP server configurations — Language Server Protocol integrations (an lsp.json file in the plugin root, or in .github/)

A plugin is a directory with a specific structure. At minimum, it contains a plugin.json manifest file at the root of the directory. The manifest gives the plugin a name and points to the components the plugin provides. Alongside the manifest, the directory can contain any combination of agents, skills, hooks, MCP server configurations, and LSP server configurations.

A typical plugin directory looks like this:

my-plugin/
├── plugin.json           # Required manifest
├── agents/               # Custom agents (optional)
│   └── helper.agent.md
├── skills/               # Skills (optional)
│   └── deploy/
│       └── SKILL.md
├── hooks.json            # Hook configuration (optional)
├── .mcp.json             # MCP server config (optional)
└── lsp.json              # LSP server config (optional)

For the full set of fields you can include in the manifest, see Référence du plug-in CLI GitHub Copilot. For step-by-step guidance on authoring a plugin, see Création d’un plug-in pour CLI GitHub Copilot.

Why use plugins?

Plugins provide the following benefits:

Reusability across projects
Team standardization of Copilot configuration
Share domain expertise (for example, by providing the skills of a Rails expert, or a Kubernetes expert)
Encapsulate complex MCP server setups

Where can I get plugins?

You can install plugins from:

A marketplace
A repository
A local path

A marketplace is a location where developers can publish, discover, install, and manage plugins. It's a bit like an app store—but for plugins.

Examples of marketplaces include:

How you install a plugin depends on which client you're using:

In Copilot pour CLI, you can install plugins imperatively using the copilot plugin install command or the /plugin install slash command, or declaratively by adding the plugin to the enabledPlugins field of either a user-level ~/.copilot/settings.json file or a repository-level .github/copilot/settings.json file. See Recherche et installation de plug-ins pour CLI GitHub Copilot.
In Agent cloud Copilot, you install plugins declaratively by adding them to the enabledPlugins field of the repository's .github/copilot/settings.json file. To install plugins from a marketplace that isn't registered by default, you can also add the marketplace to the extraKnownMarketplaces field in the same file.

Enterprise administrators can define plugin standards that apply to users on the enterprise's Copilot plan, including specifying additional marketplaces and plugins that are automatically installed. See À propos des normes de plug-in gérés par l’entreprise.

How plugin marketplaces work

A plugin marketplace is a registry of plugins that you can browse and install from. A marketplace can be hosted in a repository on GitHub.com, in any other online Git hosting service, or on your local or shared file system.

A marketplace is defined by a marketplace.json file, which provides metadata about the marketplace and lists the plugins it makes available. Each entry in the marketplace's plugins array describes a plugin—including its name, description, version, and the path to the plugin's directory.

Because plugins in a marketplace are versioned, marketplaces make it easy to discover, install, and update plugins, and to share them across a team. For step-by-step guidance on creating a marketplace, see Création d’une place de marché de plug-ins pour CLI GitHub Copilot.

Plugins compared with manual configuration

Any functionality that you could add with a plugin, you could also add by configuring Copilot manually—for example, by adding custom agent profiles or MCP servers. However, plugins provide several advantages over manual configuration:

Feature	Manual configuration in a repository	Plugin
Scope	Single repository	Any project
Sharing	Manual copy/paste	Install command or `enabledPlugins` entry
Versioning	Git history	Marketplace versions
Discovery	Searching repositories	Marketplace browsing

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