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Using GitHub Copilot with Fused

Fused publishes its skills as a plugin marketplace that GitHub Copilot can install directly. A skill is a set of instructions Copilot loads when a task needs it, so once the Fused plugin is installed, Copilot already knows the canvas.toml format, how to structure a UDF, which props each widget takes and which fused CLI commands to run. You don't have to explain any of it in your prompts.

The same plugin works in Claude Code. This page covers the two places you use GitHub Copilot: the Copilot CLI and Copilot in Visual Studio Code. If you install the plugin with the Copilot CLI, VS Code picks it up too.

What gets installed​

Install the workbench plugin from fused-marketplace. It adds 10 skills covering UDFs, canvases, widgets, integrations, H3 datasets and the fused CLI.

Before you start​

You need a GitHub Copilot plan. Any plan works, including Copilot Free. You don't need to set up the Fused CLI first. The skills use it to push and run canvases, and they tell Copilot to install it with uv when it's missing. Copilot asks before it runs the install, and may ask you to start a new session afterward.

The first time Copilot runs a Fused command, your browser opens so you can log in to Fused. Finish logging in within 30 seconds, or ask Copilot to try again.

To set up the CLI yourself, see Install and fused login.

Copilot CLI​

Install the Copilot CLI, then add the Fused marketplace and install the plugin:

copilot plugin marketplace add fusedio/skills
copilot plugin install workbench@fused-marketplace

The install prints Plugin "workbench" installed successfully. Installed 10 skills. Start a new copilot session to use them. To update or remove the plugin later, see Advanced.

Visual Studio Code​

Copilot Chat in VS Code loads skills from agent plugins. Agent plugins need the chat.plugins.enabled setting turned on, so check it in Settings before you install. If your organization turns it off, see Advanced.

Already installed with the Copilot CLI​

There is nothing else to do. VS Code discovers plugins installed with the Copilot CLI from ~/.copilot/installed-plugins/, so workbench appears in the Agent Plugins - Installed view of the Extensions sidebar.

Install from VS Code​

  1. Run Chat: Manage Plugin Marketplaces from the Command Palette, select Add Marketplace... and enter fusedio/skills. VS Code adds it to the chat.plugins.marketplaces setting and keeps the marketplaces already there.
  2. Open the Extensions view (⇧⌘X on macOS, Ctrl+Shift+X on Windows and Linux) and search for @agentPlugins.
  3. Find workbench from fused-marketplace and select Install. The first time you install from a new marketplace, VS Code asks you to trust it.

To check the skills loaded, run Chat: Open Customizations from the Command Palette and select Skills, or type / in the Chat input to list them. To update or remove the plugin later, see Advanced.

Try it out​

Start Copilot with a prompt that builds a canvas:

copilot -i "Make a Hello World canvas with some dummy data and a chart showing the number of rows in the data"

copilot -i opens an interactive session and runs the prompt straight away. In Visual Studio Code, paste the quoted prompt into Copilot Chat instead.

Copilot picks the Fused skills the task needs, writes the UDF and the chart widget, and uses the fused CLI to push the canvas to your account.

To try it with real data, use this prompt which will use the fused-h3 skill to query the public ERA5 weather dataset:

copilot -i "Make a canvas that charts the daily high temperature in Boulder, Colorado for July 2020 from Fused's public ERA5 dataset, in °F"

To change a canvas you already have, pull it to a local folder, ask Copilot to edit the files, then push it back. The steps are the same as with Claude Code: see Editing canvases locally.

Advanced​

Update the plugin

Update the plugin with the tool you installed it with. Updating pulls the latest skills from the fusedio/skills repository.

In the Copilot CLI:

copilot plugin update workbench@fused-marketplace

In Visual Studio Code, run Extensions: Check for Extension Updates from the Command Palette. VS Code also checks every 24 hours when extensions.autoUpdate is on.

Uninstall the plugin

Remove the plugin with the tool you installed it with.

In the Copilot CLI:

copilot plugin uninstall workbench@fused-marketplace

In Visual Studio Code, right-click workbench in the Agent Plugins - Installed view of the Extensions sidebar and select Uninstall.

Install the skills without the plugin

If your organization has turned off agent plugins, install the skills on their own. They're plain Agent Skills folders, and both the Copilot CLI and VS Code read personal skills from ~/.agents/skills:

git clone https://github.com/fusedio/skills ~/.fused-plugins
mkdir -p ~/.agents/skills
ln -s ~/.fused-plugins/workbench/skills/* ~/.agents/skills/

copilot skill list now shows the Fused skills under Personal skills. To update them, run git -C ~/.fused-plugins pull.

See also​