Microsoft has introduced built-in Agent Skills in Visual Studio, giving developers ready-to-use AI capabilities created by the .NET and Azure engineering teams. Available starting with Visual Studio 18.8, these skills are designed to help developers customize agentic workflows and complete common development tasks more efficiently.
Here's what you need to know:
Where to find these skills?
You can access Agent Skills from the Built-in category in the Visual Studio tool picker. They appear automatically when the required .NET or Azure development workloads are installed, and you can view each skill's description or open its folder directly.
.NET Skill #1: Build better APIs
The dotnet-webapi skill helps agents create and modify ASP.NET Core HTTP APIs using proper HTTP semantics, OpenAPI metadata, and error handling. This means cleaner, production-ready code with less manual refinement from your first prompt.
.NET Skill #2: Improve application performance
The analyzing-dotnet-performance skill reviews your .NET code for dozens of common performance issues across memory, async, LINQ, collections, serialisation, and more. It prioritises the biggest optimisation opportunities so you know where to focus first.
Azure Skill #1: Deploy from local to cloud
The Azure deployment skills automate the journey from local development to Azure by preparing infrastructure, validating configurations, and deploying your application. They also include built-in error recovery to reduce deployment friction and simplify cloud delivery.
Azure Skill #2: Investigate logs with Kusto
The azure-Kusto skill lets you analyse Azure Data Explorer logs and telemetry using natural language prompts. It generates and runs KQL queries for you, helping you quickly uncover trends, errors, and performance insights.
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