GitHub makes Agent Plugins 1.0, an open standard for skills and MCP servers, generally available in Copilot

Archive entry: this covers an event from August 12, 2026, and we published it on November 8, 2026. The details come from sources dated at the time and may have changed since.

On August 12, 2026, GitHub made Agent Plugins 1.0 generally available in VS Code, Copilot CLI, the Copilot SDK and the Copilot app, according to the GitHub changelog entry. It was available on all Copilot plans.

What changed

• Open standard: Agent Plugins packaged agent skills and MCP servers into one installable plugin.
• Backers: GitHub said version 1.0 was published on August 6 with AWS, Anysphere, Microsoft, OpenAI and Vercel, and that Google joined as a core maintainer.
• Discovery: plugins could be found through the Awesome Copilot marketplace.

What it meant for people building with AI

One plugin format backed by GitHub, OpenAI, Anysphere, AWS, Vercel and Google meant that skills and MCP bundles could travel between coding agents. A team could package skills and MCP servers once as a plugin and install it in VS Code, Copilot CLI, the Copilot SDK or the Copilot app. Because the standard was available on all Copilot plans, access did not depend on the Copilot plan.

Migrating a plugin

GitHub listed what a migration involved: a $schema field in plugin.json, a skills/ folder, an mcp.json file and Copilot-specific settings under com.github.copilot/. For organizations, admins could manage plugins with the enabledPlugins, extraKnownMarketplaces and strictKnownMarketplaces managed settings.

Sources

• Agent Plugins 1.0 in VS Code, Copilot CLI, and the Copilot app (GitHub, August 12, 2026, official)

Written with AI assistance, strictly from the sources listed above. Before it went live, automated checks verified its dates, sources and every language edition.