MicrosoftAzure Skills is a plugin for coding agents that packages Azure guidance and MCP-backed execution in one install. It treats Azure work as a decision problem (which service fits, what to validate before deploying, which tools to run, which guardrails apply) and gives the agent both the workflows and the tools to act on live resources.
The plugin has three layers. Curated skills supply workflows, decision trees, and guardrails for scenarios such as preparing, validating, deploying, and upgrading apps, diagnostics and compliance, cost and compute optimization, and data, AI, identity, and platform services. The Azure MCP Server provides 200+ structured tools across 40+ Azure services for listing resources, checking prices, querying logs, and diagnosing issues. Foundry MCP covers Microsoft Foundry work such as model discovery, deployment, and agent workflows.
The same capability layer runs across multiple hosts: GitHub Copilot in VS Code and the Copilot CLI, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, IntelliJ IDEA, and any harness supported by APM. Authentication goes through the Azure CLI (az login), the Azure Developer CLI for deployments, service-principal environment variables, or managed identity when the agent runs inside Azure. Sovereign clouds (Azure China, Azure US Government) are selected with a --cloud argument on the MCP server.
Features
- Build and deploy skills: azure-prepare, azure-validate, azure-deploy, azure-upgrade, azure-enterprise-infra-planner, azure-hosted-copilot-sdk, azure-kubernetes, and airunway-aks-setup
- Troubleshoot and govern skills: azure-diagnostics, appinsights-instrumentation, azure-compliance, azure-resource-lookup, and azure-quotas
- Architecture and cost skills: azure-cost, azure-compute, azure-resource-visualizer, and azure-cloud-migrate
- Data, AI, and identity skills: azure-ai, azure-aigateway, azure-storage, azure-kusto, azure-messaging, azure-rbac, entra-app-registration, and microsoft-foundry
- Azure MCP Server: 200+ tools over 40+ services for resource inventory, monitoring, pricing, storage, databases, and messaging
- Foundry MCP: model catalog, deployments, agents, and evaluations in Microsoft Foundry
- Multi-host: one plugin for GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, and IntelliJ, with a single apm.yml via APM
- Authentication options: Azure CLI, Azure Developer CLI, service principal variables, or managed identity
- Sovereign clouds: --cloud AzureChinaCloud or AzureUSGovernment on the MCP server
