VS Code Integration

The gh aw cli provides a few tools to improve your developer experience in VS 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

You can leverage tasks in VS 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.