AINE Plugin Collection

Collection of GitHub Copilot Plugins, each designed to embed a specialized workflow directly into your editor. This repository hosts multiple plugins that share a build pipeline and can be installed independently.

• AINE Plugin Collection
  • Available plugins
  • Requirements
  • Installation
    • Install from github repo
    • Manual installation (local build)
  • Project Structure
  • Development
    • Build
    • Plugin variables
    • Shared assets
    • @embed directive
    • Create new plugin
    • Review SKILL with TESSL
    • Evaluate a skill
  • VS Code Documentation

Available plugins

Plugin	Description
sdd-team	A full software-development team powered by Specification-Driven Development (SDD)
mini-sdd	A minimal spec-driven development framework — context -> spec -> implement
aine-agents	Specialist engineering agents for code exploration, architecture planning, and high-signal code review, plus a guided /feature-dev workflow

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Requirements

• VS Code 1.100 or later
• GitHub Copilot subscription with Agent mode enabled

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Installation

Install from github repo

Configure plugin marketplaces

Manual installation (local build)

Clone this repository, run nvm use && npm ci && npm run build. Then follow instruction here: Use local plugins.

Example:

"chat.plugins.paths": {
  "path/aine-copilot-plugins/dist/plugins/sdd-team": true
},

After installation, the agents and skills are immediately available in the Copilot Chat panel.

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Project Structure

aine-team-copilot-plugin/
├── src/                          # Plugin source files (one subfolder per plugin)
│   ├── sdd-team/                 # sdd-team plugin source
│   │   ├── plugin.json           # Plugin manifest (source)
│   │   ├── config.json           # Build variables and shared asset mappings
│   │   ├── shared-assets/               # Shared assets (distributed to skills at build time)
│   │   │   └── assets/        # Templates shared across multiple skills
│   │   ├── agents/               # Agent definitions (.agent.md)
│   │   └── skills/               # Skill definitions (one subfolder per skill)
│   │       ├── sdd-help/         # Example skill with local-only assets
│   │       │    ├── SKILL.md      # Skill definition and prompt
│   │       │    └── references/   # Reference files local to this skill
│   │       └── ...
│   └── <your-new-plugin>/        # Add new plugins here
│       ├── plugin.json
│       └── ...
├── dist/plugins/                 # Built output — one subfolder per plugin
│   └── sdd-team/
│       ├── .github/plugin/
│       │   └── plugin.json       # Final plugin manifest
│       ├── agents/
│       └── skills/               # Each skill contains its distributed templates
│           ├── sdd-prd/
│           │   ├── SKILL.md
│           │   └── assets/    # Copied from plugin-level assets/ at build time
│           └── ...
└── scripts/                      # Build and validation scripts

Source files live in src/. Each subdirectory of src/ is treated as an independent plugin and materialized into the corresponding dist/plugins/<name>/ directory by npm run build.

Assets shared across multiple skills live in the plugin-level shared-assets folder and are distributed to the appropriate skill directories at build time via sharedAssets in config.json. Skills that use local-only assets (not shared) can keep their own files directly in their skill subfolder. If a shared asset has the same path as a local skill asset, the local version wins and the shared one is skipped for that skill.

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Development

Build

npm install
npm run build

The build script automatically discovers all plugin directories inside src/ and for each one:

• Copies agents, skills, and templates into dist/plugins/<plugin-name>/
• Converts .prompt.md files into skill SKILL.md files
• Places the final plugin.json at dist/plugins/<plugin-name>/.github/plugin/plugin.json
• Applies variable substitutions defined in config.json (see Plugin variables below)

To add a new plugin, create a new directory under src/ with a plugin.json and any agents and skills — the build will pick it up automatically, or use the dedicated script npm run plugin:create

Warning

The plugin format does not support prompts, but you can include a prompts/ folder in your plugin and it will be converted into a skill by the build process.

Plugin variables

Each plugin can define a config.json file at the root of its source directory to declare build-time variables:

{
  "variables": {
    "ARTIFACT_MAIN_FOLDER": "sdd-docs"
  }
}

In any agent, skill, or template file use the placeholder {VARIABLE_NAME}. The build will replace every occurrence with the configured value across all text files (.md, .json, .html, .yaml) in the plugin output.

Example — in a skill file:

Read the PRD at `{ARTIFACT_MAIN_FOLDER}/prd.md`.

After build, this becomes:

Read the PRD at `sdd-docs/prd.md`.

This lets end users (or CI) customise paths and names without editing every skill file — just change the value in config.json and re-run npm run build.

Shared assets

Templates or other files needed by multiple skills can be placed once in the plugin-level assets/ folder and distributed to the right skills at build time, avoiding duplication.

Declare the mapping in config.json under sharedAssets:

{
  "variables": { ... },
  "sharedAssets": [
    { "asset": "assets/prd.md", "skills": ["sdd-prd", "sdd-init"] },
    { "asset": "scripts/common.sh", "skills": ["*"] }
  ]
}

Each entry specifies:

• asset — path relative to the plugin's shared-assets/ folder (file or directory)
• skills — list of skill folder names to copy it into, or ["*"] to copy into every skill

During the build, each asset is copied into skills/<skill-name>/<asset> (e.g. skills/sdd-prd/assets/prd.md). The plugin-level shared-assets/ folder is not included in the dist output — only the per-skill copies are.

Local wins: if a skill already contains a file at the same destination path, the shared asset is skipped and the local file is preserved. This makes it safe to override a shared asset for a specific skill without touching the others.

Variable substitution (see above) is applied to shared assets after they are copied, so {VARIABLE_NAME} placeholders work in shared templates too.

@embed directive

The @embed directive lets you inline the contents of any file directly into a skill or agent markdown file at build time, without shipping the referenced file as a separate asset.

Place the directive anywhere in a .md, .txt, .yaml, .yml, .json, or .html file inside a plugin:

<!-- @embed assets/my-template.md -->

During the build, the directive is replaced with the full contents of the referenced file. Paths are resolved relative to the file that contains the directive.

If the target file does not exist, the directive is left unchanged and a warning is printed to the console.

When to use @embed vs shared assets

	@embed	Shared assets
Content appears inline in the skill	✅	❌ (separate file)
Preserves progressive disclosure	❌ (always loaded)	✅
Good for	Small, always-needed snippets	Templates read on demand

Create new plugin

npm run plugin:create

This command scaffolds a new plugin directory under src/ with a basic plugin.json. You can then customize these files to build your plugin.

Review SKILL with TESSL

Validate a skill (or all skills in a plugin) against the tessl spec. Run npm run build first to populate dist/plugins/.

npm run skill:review

The CLI will prompt you to pick a plugin and a skill (or "All skills" for an aggregated report).

For non-interactive use — e.g. in CI:

Usage: npm run skill:review -- [options]

Options:
  -p, --plugin <name>   Plugin to review (must exist in dist/plugins/)
  -s, --skill  <name>   Single skill to review
  -a, --all             Review all skills in the plugin and print a summary table
  -j, --json            Output raw JSON (single skill) or aggregated JSON (--all)

Evaluate a skill

Skills can be evaluated with a draft-test-review-iterate loop powered by the skill-creator skill. The loop runs test prompts against the skill and a no-skill baseline, grades assertions automatically, and opens an interactive viewer so you can review outputs and leave feedback.

Prerequisites: install skill-creator globally:

npx skills add https://github.com/anthropics/skills --skill skill-creator

Example prompt (paste into Copilot Chat with the skill-creator active):

I already have a skill in #file:src/mini-sdd — I want to create evals for the
#file:src/mini-sdd/skills/mini-sdd-context skill. Read #file:src/mini-sdd/README.md
for context on what the skill is supposed to do.

The skill-creator will:

1. Propose 2–3 realistic test cases for you to approve
2. Create input fixture files under skills/<skill-name>/evals/files/
3. Save test cases to skills/<skill-name>/evals/evals.json
4. Spawn parallel subagent runs — one with the skill, one baseline — per test case
5. Draft and grade assertions while runs are in progress
6. Aggregate results into <skill-name>-workspace/iteration-1/benchmark.json
7. Open a static HTML viewer (/tmp/<skill-name>-review.html) for qualitative review

After reviewing, tell the skill-creator what you'd like to improve and ask for another iteration. Repeat until satisfied.

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VS Code Documentation

For more information on Agent Plugins, see the official VS Code documentation:
https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/customization/agent-plugins