---
name: copilot-agent-patterns
description: GitHub Copilot custom agent design patterns, best practices, collaboration workflows, and agent orchestration
license: Apache-2.0
---

# Copilot Agent Patterns Skill


## 🔴 AI FIRST Quality Principle

> **Apply the AI FIRST principle: never accept first-pass quality. Minimum 2 iterations. Read all output, improve every section. No shortcuts.**

## Purpose
Provides proven patterns for designing, implementing, and orchestrating GitHub Copilot custom agents.

## Agent Design Patterns

### Specialist Agent Pattern
- Focused on single domain expertise
- Minimal tool set (`view`, `edit`, `create`, `shell`, `search_code`)
- Clear scope boundaries (MUST/MUST NOT)
- Skills integration references

### Orchestrator Agent Pattern
- Broad tool access (`tools: ["*"]`)
- Creates and assigns GitHub issues
- Delegates to specialist agents
- Tracks progress and quality

### YAML Frontmatter Standards
```yaml
name: agent-name               # Lowercase, hyphen-separated
description: Brief expertise   # Max 200 characters
tools: ["tool1", "tool2"]     # Minimal set for non-meta agents
```

## Collaboration Patterns
- **Sequential**: Task agent → creates issues → assigns specialists
- **Parallel**: Multiple specialists work on different scopes simultaneously
- **Stacked PRs**: Foundation PR → Implementation PR → Polish PR (using base_ref)

## Agent Boundaries
- Each agent respects its expertise area
- Delegates outside its scope
- References skills library constantly
- Follows ISMS policies automatically

## Copilot Coding Agent Tools
- `assign_copilot_to_issue` — with base_ref and custom_instructions
- `create_pull_request_with_copilot` — with base_ref and custom_agent
- `get_copilot_job_status` — for tracking progress

## Best Practices
- Focus on expertise area
- Complete work autonomously when possible
- Test changes thoroughly
- Document decisions
- Only ask when genuinely ambiguous

## Related Policies
- [Secure Development Policy](https://github.com/Hack23/ISMS-PUBLIC/blob/main/Secure_Development_Policy.md)


---

## 🔗 Integration with agentic workflows & analysis artifacts

This skill is consumed by the 11 agentic news workflows in `.github/workflows/news-*.md`. The authoritative contract lives in [`.github/prompts/README.md`](../../prompts/README.md); this skill supplies domain expertise on top of that contract.

- **Analysis product** → [`ai-driven-analysis-guide.md`](../../../analysis/methodologies/ai-driven-analysis-guide.md) + every template in [`analysis/templates/`](../../../analysis/templates/).
- **Required before any article**: 9 core artifacts (14 for Tier-C) in `analysis/daily/$ARTICLE_DATE/$SUBFOLDER/`; [`05-analysis-gate.md`](../../prompts/05-analysis-gate.md) is the single blocking gate.
- **gh-aw v0.69.3** docs: [abridged](https://github.github.com/gh-aw/llms-small.txt) · [complete](https://github.github.com/gh-aw/llms-full.txt) · [blog series](https://github.github.com/gh-aw/_llms-txt/agentic-workflows.txt).