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Skill changes are not picked up without VsCode restart #2825
Description
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
github-actions commentedon Oct 9, 2026
Thanks for the report. I looked at the Node SDK (
nodejs/src/client.ts,types.ts, and the generated RPC ingenerated/rpc.ts). The SDK only passesskillDirectoriesthrough 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 exposessession.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
questionbecause 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 updatedskillDirectories.mgryzykhin commentedon Oct 9, 2026
On the linked ticket in VsCode repo, they point that the issue should be addressed by copilot-sdk. Seems like a back and forth that I'm not clear how to navigate. Can someone help with it?