vscode.md

Visual Studio Code Integration

The gh aw cli provides a few tools to improve your developer experience in Visual Studio Code (or other IDEs).

Copilot instructions

If you add the --instructions flag to the compile command, it will also write a custom Copilot intructions file at .github/instructions/github-agentic-workflows.instructions.md.

gh aw compile --instructions

The instructions will automatically be imported by Copilot when authoring markdown files under the .github/workflows folder.

Once configured, you will notice that Copilot Chat will be much more efficient at generating Agentic Workflows.

Background Compilation using Tasks

You can leverage tasks in Visual Studio Code to configure a background compilation of Agentic Workflows.

• open or create .vscode/tasks.json
• add or merge the following JSON:

{
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "tasks": [
    {
      "label": "Compile Github Agentic Workflows",
      "dependsOn": ["Compile gh-aw"],
      "type": "shell",
      "command": "./gh-aw",
      "args": ["compile", "--watch"],
      "isBackground": true,
      "problemMatcher": {
        "owner": "gh-aw",
        "fileLocation": "relative",
        "pattern": {
          "regexp": "^(.*?):(\\d+):(\\d+):\\s(error|warning):\\s(.+)$",
          "file": 1,
          "line": 2,
          "column": 3,
          "severity": 4,
          "message": 5
        },
        "background": {
          "activeOnStart": true,
          "beginsPattern": "Watching for file changes",
          "endsPattern": "Recompiled"
        }
      },
      "group": { "kind": "build", "isDefault": true },
      "runOptions": { "runOn": "folderOpen" }
    }
  ]
}

The background compilation should start as soon as you open a Markdown file under .github/workflows/. If it does not start,

• open the command palette (Ctrl + Shift + P)
• type Tasks: Run Task to start the task once
• or type Tasks: Managed Automatic Tasks and select Allow Automatic Tasks to start it automatically.