Agent Skills Support in Public Preview

GitHub Copilot for JetBrains IDEs now supports Agent Skills, a new feature that enables developers to tailor Copilot for their specific workflows. Skills help reduce repeated setup and automatically load skill-specific content into context when needed. Developers can create custom skills for their projects or leverage community-created skills from repositories like github/awesome-copilot and anthropics/skills.

To enable Agent Skills, navigate to Settings > GitHub Copilot > Chat > Agent. For Copilot Business or Enterprise subscribers, administrators must first enable the Editor preview features policy.

Enhanced User Experience

The update introduces several quality-of-life improvements across the IDE:

• Inline Chat Enhancements: Quickly add selected code as contextual input to Copilot Chat, and open inline chat directly from the floating code toolbar for faster iteration.
• Refined Settings Management: Individual toggles now allow you to independently control Agent mode, Coding Agent, and Custom Agent. A sign-in reminder appears if you're not authenticated.
• Improved Navigation: Smoother file navigation during collapse/expand operations, more intuitive prompt navigation with Home and End keys, and redesigned chat and diff views for better readability.

Quality and Stability Improvements

The release prioritizes reliability with enhanced safety checks in file-handling tools, increased stability for next edit suggestions, and persistent mode settings that survive IDE restarts.

Getting Started

Update to the latest version of the GitHub Copilot plugin to access these features. Share feedback via in-product feedback options or the GitHub Copilot for JetBrains IDEs feedback repository.