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Hands-on AI Playbook

Skills on M365 Copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot supports Agent Skills natively in Copilot Cowork, which is generally available to Microsoft 365 Copilot license holders (your admin enables it; it uses usage-based billing). Cowork reads SKILL.md files from a folder in your OneDrive, and the Customize page can put them there for you — no plugin install, no terminal.

Before you start: open Microsoft 365 Copilot and look for Cowork in the left navigation. If it isn’t there, ask your IT admin to enable it. Custom skills aren’t available in Cowork on mobile.

Upload a skill (easiest)

Section titled “Upload a skill (easiest)”

In Cowork: Customize → Skills → the arrow next to Add → Upload skill, then choose a .md, .zip, or .skill file. Cowork validates it and saves it to your OneDrive; it appears under Your skills after a few moments. Microsoft’s docs describe a ZIP with SKILL.md at its root and companion files beside it; the Hands-on AI downloads come in both layouts (analyze.zip and analyze-flat.zip) — use the flat one if the first is rejected. Uploading a skill with the same name again creates a numbered copy rather than replacing — delete the old one first to update.

→ Upload a skill (Microsoft Learn)

Or put the folder in OneDrive yourself

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  • Where they live: Documents/Cowork/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md in your OneDrive (lowercase skills)
  • How they’re discovered: automatically at the start of each session; loaded skills appear as chips in the side panel under Skills
  • Companion files: up to 20 per skill (reference documents, scripts), 10 MB per skill
  1. In OneDrive, open Documents/Cowork/skills/ — create the folders if they don’t exist.
  2. Create a subfolder named for the skill and put SKILL.md inside it.
  3. Start a new Cowork conversation — the skill is available immediately.

→ Cowork skills (Microsoft Learn)

Limits: up to 50 custom skills; 1 MB per SKILL.md; 20 companion files and 10 MB per skill.

Classic M365 Copilot: no native skill support outside Cowork.

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