superpowers/skills/using-superpowers/references/copilot-tools.md

Copilot CLI Tool Mapping

Skills speak in actions ("dispatch a subagent", "create a todo", "read a file"). On Copilot CLI these resolve to the tools below.

Action skills request	Copilot CLI equivalent
Read a file	view
Create / edit / delete a file	apply_patch (Copilot CLI has no separate create/edit/write tools)
Run a shell command	bash
Search file contents	rg (ripgrep; Copilot CLI does not expose a grep tool)
Find files by name	glob
Fetch a URL	web_fetch
Search the web	web_search
Invoke a skill	skill
Dispatch a subagent (Subagent (general-purpose): template)	task with agent_type: "general-purpose" (other accepted types: explore, task, code-review, research, configure-copilot)
Multiple parallel dispatches	Multiple task calls in one response
Subagent status/output/control	read_agent, list_agents, write_agent
Task tracking ("create a todo", "mark complete")	update_todo
Enter / exit plan mode	No equivalent — stay in the main session

Instructions file

When a skill mentions "your instructions file", on Copilot CLI this is AGENTS.md at the repository root. If both AGENTS.md and .github/copilot-instructions.md are present, Copilot reads both.

Personal skills directory

User-level skills live at ~/.copilot/skills/. Copilot CLI also recognizes the cross-runtime alias ~/.agents/skills/, which is shared with Codex and Gemini CLI. Each skill is a subdirectory containing a SKILL.md (with name and description frontmatter).

Async shell sessions

Copilot CLI supports persistent async shell sessions:

Tool	Purpose
bash with mode: "async" (and optionally detach: true)	Start a long-running command in the background; returns a shellId
write_bash	Send input to a running async session
read_bash	Read output from an async session
stop_bash	Terminate an async session
list_bash	List all active shell sessions

Additional Copilot CLI tools

Tool	Purpose
store_memory	Persist facts about the codebase for future sessions
report_intent	Update the UI status line with current intent
sql	Query the session's SQLite database (todos, metadata)
fetch_copilot_cli_documentation	Look up Copilot CLI documentation
GitHub MCP tools (github-mcp-server-*)	Native GitHub API access (issues, PRs, code search)