Skills

Skill 135 of 200

Desk Open

Create and open a new desk in the workshop. Sets up the folder structure, initial journal, and desk identity so the next session that sits down finds the trail.

2 minutes · 365 words · 7 sections

Install

$ npx skills add github/awesome-copilot --skill desk-open

$ npx skills add github/awesome-copilot

» /plugin marketplace add github/awesome-copilot

The first command installs just this skill, by the name in its SKILL.md; the second installs the whole repository.

Open a Desk

Create a new desk in the workshop with the standard structure.

When to use

The operator wants to start a new workstream
Work arrives that doesn’t belong to any existing desk
A topic needs its own frame (its own history, its own priors)

What it creates

Given a workshop directory and a desk name, create:

desks/<desk-name>/
  journal.md       # persistent memory — read at start, written at end
  .signals/        # structured signal output (JSON) — dashboard reads this

How to use

Choose a name. Short, descriptive, kebab-case. The name is how the operator and other desks refer to this desk. Examples: security-scan, api-review, ops, cloud-workshop
Check if it already exists. If desks/<desk-name>/ already has a journal.md, the desk is live — do not overwrite it. Instead, resume it: read the journal and continue from where it left off. If the operator explicitly wants a fresh start, they must rename or archive the existing desk first.
Create the structure. Make the directory, initial journal, and signals folder:
```
desks/<desk-name>/journal.md
desks/<desk-name>/.signals/
```
Write the first journal entry. The journal starts with:
- What this desk is for (its focus/purpose)
- What repos or work it covers (if applicable)
- Any initial context the first session needs
Announce it. Tell the operator what was created and what the desk’s focus is.

Session orientation

This skill initializes storage — it does not launch a session. A desk becomes active when a Copilot session references its directory. The session workflow:

The operator (or TA) starts a session and says “sit at the <desk-name> desk”
The session reads desks/<desk-name>/journal.md to load priors
Work happens — the session uses signal-write to emit signals and desk-journal to persist state at the end
The next session repeats from step 2

The desk identity comes from which journal is read, not from a persistent process. Desks are long-running in state (the journal carries forward), not in runtime (each session is independent).

Journal format

# <Desk Name> — Journal

## <date> — Desk opened
- **Purpose:** <what this desk focuses on>
- **Scope:** <repos, areas, or work this desk covers>
- **Next step:** <what the first session should do>

Principles

A desk is a peer, not a sub-agent. It has equal standing to disagree with other desks.
The journal is the memory. Without it, the next session starts blind. Write enough that someone starting from zero finds the way.
One desk, one focus. If the scope is too broad, open two desks. Each desk’s value comes from its specific frame — dilute the frame and you lose the value.

Colophon for this issue

Colophon

How this issue was made

Source

github.com/github/awesome-copilot, branch main, last pushed 24 September 2026.

Licence

MIT — the text of every skill is reproduced unmodified, frontmatter included, under the upstream licence.

Discovery

200 skills found by walking the repository tree for SKILL.md, not by matching a directory convention. 2 distinct layouts observed: .github/skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/*/SKILL.md.

Authorship

3 of 200 skills are installed into the repository rather than published from it. They are shelved in the closing “Credited skills” part and remain the work of their own authors. A skill counts as credited when its only copy lives under one agent’s dot directory; visible directories, per-agent mirror sets, and skills installable from this repository on skills.sh all count as published.

Issue colours

Resolved from a curated brand profile — hue 295°, chroma 0.190. Two accent tones are generated per issue and each is proven against its own ground before it ships: a single accent that passes AA on both light and dark paper is arithmetically impossible.

Heading repairs

1 repair applied to this skill so the document has one h1 and no skipped levels:

Shifted “7 headings” from h1 to h2 so the skill title is the only h1.

Spec compliance

Every skill satisfies the Agent Skills specification’s frontmatter rules.

Images

Images inside a skill come from the upstream repository. Where the author gave no alternative text we mark the image decorative rather than inventing a description — a plausible caption we made up is worse than none for the reader who depends on it.

Marketplace

A plugin manifest is published at .github/plugin/marketplace.json by GitHub, declaring 162 plugins. It is read for editorial metadata only — never as the skill index, which is always the repository tree.

Signal

Install counts come from skills.sh. They measure downloads, not quality, and an unranked repository is not an unread one.

Agent surfaces

The whole issue is available as one markdown document at /github/awesome-copilot.md, and each skill at its own .md URL.

Publication

Set by Skills Docs from the source repository. Body text is Literata at the reader’s chosen size and measure; code is Geist Mono. Nothing on this page was written by us except this paragraph.

Open a Desk

Create a new desk in the workshop with the standard structure.

When to use

The operator wants to start a new workstream
Work arrives that doesn’t belong to any existing desk
A topic needs its own frame (its own history, its own priors)

What it creates

Given a workshop directory and a desk name, create:

desks/<desk-name>/
  journal.md       # persistent memory — read at start, written at end
  .signals/        # structured signal output (JSON) — dashboard reads this

How to use

Choose a name. Short, descriptive, kebab-case. The name is how the operator and other desks refer to this desk. Examples: security-scan, api-review, ops, cloud-workshop
Check if it already exists. If desks/<desk-name>/ already has a journal.md, the desk is live — do not overwrite it. Instead, resume it: read the journal and continue from where it left off. If the operator explicitly wants a fresh start, they must rename or archive the existing desk first.
Create the structure. Make the directory, initial journal, and signals folder:
```
desks/<desk-name>/journal.md
desks/<desk-name>/.signals/
```
Write the first journal entry. The journal starts with:
- What this desk is for (its focus/purpose)
- What repos or work it covers (if applicable)
- Any initial context the first session needs
Announce it. Tell the operator what was created and what the desk’s focus is.

Session orientation

This skill initializes storage — it does not launch a session. A desk becomes active when a Copilot session references its directory. The session workflow:

The operator (or TA) starts a session and says “sit at the <desk-name> desk”
The session reads desks/<desk-name>/journal.md to load priors
Work happens — the session uses signal-write to emit signals and desk-journal to persist state at the end
The next session repeats from step 2

The desk identity comes from which journal is read, not from a persistent process. Desks are long-running in state (the journal carries forward), not in runtime (each session is independent).

Journal format

# <Desk Name> — Journal

## <date> — Desk opened
- **Purpose:** <what this desk focuses on>
- **Scope:** <repos, areas, or work this desk covers>
- **Next step:** <what the first session should do>

Principles

A desk is a peer, not a sub-agent. It has equal standing to disagree with other desks.
The journal is the memory. Without it, the next session starts blind. Write enough that someone starting from zero finds the way.
One desk, one focus. If the scope is too broad, open two desks. Each desk’s value comes from its specific frame — dilute the frame and you lose the value.