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Exploring Microsoft Copilot Cowork skills

June 25, 2026 by Jesper Nielsen • 28 minutes to read

What happens when years of refining AI instructions meet a completely new way of working with AI?

In my previous post, I covered what Copilot Cowork is, how it works, and why the personalization model - personal instructions, memory, and custom skills - is what sets it apart. This post goes deeper into the skill format itself and the journey of translating years of GitHub Copilot instruction files into Copilot Cowork skills.

Building instruction files for GitHub Copilot

May 6, 2026 by Jesper Nielsen • 27 minutes to read

What if the most impactful thing you could do for your coding workflow was not writing code at all - but teaching your AI assistant how you think?

Most people start using GitHub Copilot the same way: open a file, type a comment, accept a suggestion. It works. But after a while, you notice the output does not quite match your standards. Variable names are wrong. The script structure is off. Terminology is inconsistent. You spend time correcting GitHub Copilot’s output instead of building on it.