Harnesses

GitHub Copilot

The Copilot CLI. Instructions and skills under .github, Claude's skills read too, MCP servers in the VS Code dialect, agent mode without a JSON variant.

getHarness: getHarness("github-copilot")
binary: copilot
invoke modes: 1 of 6 · community
model listing: no
mcp config: json · vscode
agents file: none

Copilot CLI reads what the repository already has for GitHub: .github/copilot-instructions.md, modular .github/instructions/*.instructions.md, and .github/skills/. It also picks up .claude/skills/ by itself. Its MCP servers are the VS Code file, .vscode/mcp.json, in that dialect, the only harness in the registry with no user level MCP file.

The headless mode is -p, at community evidence level, and it is the one harness with an agent mode and no structured output flag recorded, so structured: true is rejected. Voice input is transcribed locally to text, so audio is false. No user scope instructions file, no sessions location known.

Capabilities and invocation

mcp: yesvision: yesaudio: novideo: notools: yesstreaming: yes

Binary copilot, evidence community. GitHub Copilot CLI, separate from the editor integration.No model selection: a model option is rejected.

advisor

{}

rejected

advisor · json

{ structured: true }

rejected

read-only

{ readOnly: true }

rejected

read-only · json

{ readOnly: true, structured: true }

rejected

agent

{ tools: true }

-p {prompt}

agent · json

{ tools: true, structured: true }

rejected

Paths

Templates as the registry stores them. ~, ${HOME} and %VAR% expand in resolve(); entries tagged with a platform are dropped on the others. Open in the explorer to see them expanded for a home directory of your choice.

config

~/.copilot/config.jsonuser · inferred · all

instructions

.github/copilot-instructions.mdproject · official · all
.github/instructions/project · official · allModular instructions in .instructions.md files.

skills

.github/skills/project · official · all
.claude/skills/project · official · allCopilot auto-detects Claude skills directory.

empty

sessionscommandshooks No known location. That is not the same as the feature being missing.

MCP servers

.vscode/mcp.jsonproject · json · vscode · servers

Detection

envVars

COPILOT_RUN_APP

projectMarkers

.github/copilot-instructions.md.github/skills.github/instructions

Persistence

JSON - Configuration files. (official)

No stable user-scope instructions file, so syncAgentsFiles skips this harness.

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Cursor

The editor's CLI agent, cursor-agent. Skills at .cursor/skills plus Claude's and Codex's directories, MDC rules, no session location known.

Mastra Code

Mastra's coding agent. LibSQL database for threads, messages and observational memory, hooks and MCP in JSON, reads Claude's files as its own, no headless mode.