Preserve user-scoped skills migrated from Claude Code across updates

[mingley]

Summary

When users migrate Claude Code slash commands into Copilot CLI as user-scoped/global skills, those migrated commands can be lost after a Copilot CLI update that touches the global skills scope.

Problem

A manual migration of Claude Code slash commands to Copilot CLI works initially. However, Copilot CLI updates that modify global-scope skills appear to overwrite the entire skills folder instead of preserving or merging user-created skills. As a result, migrated slash commands stored at the user/global scope are deleted and need to be recreated.

Expected behavior

Copilot CLI updates should preserve user-created or migrated skills. If built-in/global skills need to be updated, the update process should avoid overwriting user-scoped content, or should merge safely and surface any conflicts.

Actual behavior

User-created migrated slash-command skills are removed when an update overwrites the global skills folder.

Impact

This makes migration from Claude Code slash commands to Copilot CLI unreliable, because users can lose their migrated commands on future Copilot CLI updates.

Suggested tracking questions

• Are user-scoped skills stored in a location that is expected to survive Copilot CLI updates?
• Should built-in/global skills and user-created skills be stored separately?
• If the current update process rewrites a shared folder, can it be changed to merge or preserve unknown user files?
• Should Copilot CLI provide a supported migration path for Claude Code slash commands?

[examon]

This should be resolved for skills stored in the personal scope. Skills added under ~/.copilot/skills/ (or ~/.agents/skills/) are stored separately from the bundled CLI package, and updates replace only that package, so they aren't deleted when you update. In v1.0.65, copilot skill list discovers these as personal skills. One caveat: there isn't a dedicated tool yet to migrate global Claude Code commands from ~/.claude/commands/, so any commands kept only there may need to be re-added as skills. If you're still seeing personal skills disappear after an update, please comment with where they're stored and we'll take another look.