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Skill changes are not picked up without VsCode restart #2825

Description

@mgryzykhin

Summary

I found this ticket in VsCode microsoft/vscode#290272

Changes to skills in current working directory are not being applied without VsCode restart. Applying Developer: Reload Window does not help. If you start new session, it will still have old skills definitions.

After some digging, it seems that VsCode copies working directory to %AppData%/Roaming/Code/agentPlugins and uses it as a source of truth for skills. However it never updates it to match current working tree unless you restart VsCode.

Reproduction

  • Create a new directory with .github folder and any skill defined
  • Open this folder in VsCode
  • Invoke Skill
  • Delete .github/skills directory
  • Invoke skill again

the skill will still be invoked

Expected behavior

Skills used match current working tree.
In the example above, I'd expect the deleted skill to not exist.

Versions

VsCode Version: 1.141.0 (user setup)
@github/copilot: 1.0.92-4.unstable.r37397886721.gad270aa
@github/copilot-sdk: 1.0.17.37397886721.gad270aa

Activity

  1. github-actions commented on Oct 9, 2026

    @github-actions
    Contributor

    Thanks for the report. I looked at the Node SDK (nodejs/src/client.ts, types.ts, and the generated RPC in generated/rpc.ts). The SDK only passes skillDirectories through to the CLI on session create or resume. It has no logic that copies the working directory or caches skills under %AppData%/Roaming/Code/agentPlugins. The SDK also exposes session.skills.reload, which refreshes a session's skills, so skill reloading is available at the SDK level.

    The stale-skills behavior you describe comes from how VS Code stages and caches the workspace copy. That is outside this repository, and it matches the existing issue you linked: microsoft/vscode#290272. I have not reproduced it here.

    I'm labeling this question because it doesn't look like an SDK bug. Please follow up on the VS Code issue. If a client built on the SDK sees stale skills after files change, it can call the skills reload RPC or create a session with updated skillDirectories.

    Generated by Bug Handler for #2825 · copilot · auto · 14.5 AIC · ⌖ 0.469 AIC · ⊞ 7.5K · ◷

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