Copilot Harness Port Kit · VS Code + GitHub Copilot

Copilot Harness Port Kit

Designed to help you keep chat on Local, move personal skills to folders the Copilot harness reads, and port your hooks.

$12 (plus VAT where applicable)

Get Copilot Harness Port Kit
Copilot Harness Port Kit cover: output of scripts designed to keep Local, link skills into ~/.agents/skills and port hooks.

As of October 2026, VS Code is rolling out the Copilot harness as the default for new agent sessions. In an open GitHub issue (microsoft/vscode#343749, a user report not confirmed by the VS Code team), a user reports that personal skills in ~/.claude/skills stop loading there, and the official migration guide says there is no automatic hook migration. This kit is designed to help with all three.

What’s inside

  • Keep Local while you migrate. A script that adds the three user settings the VS Code docs give to keep Local visible and turn off automatic Copilot preference, with a dry run and undo (undo restores a backup of an existing settings file; if the script created the file, delete it). The guide also explains the setting administrators can use on managed editors.
  • Skills relocation. A script that links or copies your ~/.claude/skills into ~/.agents/skills or ~/.copilot/skills, the user skill folders in the migration guide. It never touches your originals and can undo itself.
  • Hook config converter. Turns a Local or Claude-style hooks map into the Copilot version: 1 hook format: event renames, timeoutSec, flattened matcher groups. It saves the result as a staged .json.disabled file and warns about what still needs a human, such as matchers and the hook script itself.
  • Dual-format guard template. One PreToolUse script that reads both tool_name/tool_input and toolName/toolArgs and answers in the matching shape. It fails closed on bad input.
  • Guardrails Pack rules for the Copilot harness, in their own folder, with 16 test fixtures.
  • “Which harness reads which file” chart, including the double-run trap with the repository .claude/settings.json.
  • Rollback checklist and a tool-name diagnostic script.

Not tested in a live editor

62 automated tests, run on Node 20 and Node 24 from a clean unzip, against local fixtures and temporary folders, not a live Copilot session or VS Code install. The keep-Local, skills and hooks guides each end with steps to check the change in your own editor. Every behaviour is based on the official VS Code docs and two open GitHub user reports, with sources listed in the kit. The hook converter and guard follow the migration guide and are backed only by fixture tests.

What this doesn’t do

Limits: Copilot tool names differ from Local ones, so the Guardrails file rules only cover tools you add to the map (the map ships with only view; tool calls carrying a string command argument are checked as shell commands by our own heuristic, not tested in a live session). We haven’t tested whether the keep-Local settings survive a VS Code update, and the kit doesn't fix microsoft/vscode#343749 or #343753. Downgrading VS Code isn’t covered. Symlinking was tested on Linux only; on Windows, use --mode copy if linking fails.

Requires Node.js 20 or later. Single-user licence.

Get the kit

Disclosure: this is our own paid product.

Copilot Harness Port Kit: $12 (plus VAT where applicable)

Get Copilot Harness Port Kit

Digital download: by buying, you ask for immediate access and agree that your 14-day right to cancel ends once the download or access starts. We also offer a voluntary refund within 14 days of purchase if it didn't help: just reply to your receipt email. This doesn't affect your legal rights if the content is faulty.

GitHub, GitHub Copilot, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Microsoft, Claude Code, Anthropic and other names belong to their owners. Names are used only to identify products and compatibility. Stack & Ship is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.

Further reading