[Bug] awesome-copilot plugin: broken file references after Copilot CLI installation

[wmmc88]

Description

When the awesome-copilot plugin is installed via Copilot CLI (/plugin install awesome-copilot@awesome-copilot), commands and agents fail to load because the installed plugin contains stub files with relative path references that resolve outside the installed plugin directory.

Error Output

Running /skills in Copilot CLI produces:

✖ The following skills failed to load:
  • C:\Users\melvinwang\.copilot\installed-plugins\awesome-copilot\awesome-copilot\commands\suggest-awesome-github-copilot-agents.md: missing or malformed YAML frontmatter
  • C:\Users\melvinwang\.copilot\installed-plugins\awesome-copilot\awesome-copilot\commands\suggest-awesome-github-copilot-instructions.md: missing or malformed YAML frontmatter
  • C:\Users\melvinwang\.copilot\installed-plugins\awesome-copilot\awesome-copilot\commands\suggest-awesome-github-copilot-prompts.md: missing or malformed YAML frontmatter
  • C:\Users\melvinwang\.copilot\installed-plugins\awesome-copilot\awesome-copilot\commands\suggest-awesome-github-copilot-skills.md: missing or malformed YAML frontmatter

The "missing or malformed YAML frontmatter" error occurs because these files are stubs containing only a relative path (e.g. ../../../prompts/suggest-awesome-github-copilot-agents.prompt.md) instead of actual prompt content with YAML frontmatter.

Root Cause

The plugin at plugins/awesome-copilot/ uses stub files that reference the repo-root-level prompts/ and agents/ directories via relative paths (../../../). When only the plugin subtree is installed locally, these relative paths point to non-existent locations.

Two issues:

1. plugin.json references non-existent paths

plugin.json lists items like:

{ "path": "prompts/suggest-awesome-github-copilot-skills.prompt.md", "kind": "prompt" }

But no prompts/ directory exists within the plugin. The actual files are at commands/suggest-awesome-github-copilot-skills.md.

2. Stub files contain broken relative paths

The command/agent files are stubs that reference the repo root:

• commands/suggest-awesome-github-copilot-agents.md contains: ../../../prompts/suggest-awesome-github-copilot-agents.prompt.md
• agents/meta-agentic-project-scaffold.md contains: ../../../agents/meta-agentic-project-scaffold.agent.md

These ../../../ paths resolve correctly within the full repo clone, but when only the plugins/awesome-copilot/ subtree is installed by Copilot CLI, they point to nothing.

Installed file tree

awesome-copilot/
├── .github/plugin/plugin.json
├── agents/meta-agentic-project-scaffold.md          (stub → ../../../agents/...)
├── commands/
│   ├── suggest-awesome-github-copilot-agents.md     (stub → ../../../prompts/...)
│   ├── suggest-awesome-github-copilot-instructions.md
│   ├── suggest-awesome-github-copilot-prompts.md
│   └── suggest-awesome-github-copilot-skills.md
└── README.md

Expected Behavior

Plugin commands and agents should load and work correctly after installation via Copilot CLI.

Suggested Fix

Either:

1. Inline the actual prompt/agent content into the plugin files instead of using relative path stubs, or
2. Ensure the Copilot CLI plugin installer resolves the relative path references and copies the target files into the installed plugin directory.

Environment

• Copilot CLI v0.0.410
• Windows 11
• Installed via /plugin

[aaronpowell]

Sorry, missed seeing this issue. As you noted, the issue here is what I've described in #751 and we're aiming to resolve with #750.

In the interim, you can enable symlinks on Windows, tell git to respect symlinks, then clean out the plugin cache from the ~/.copilot folder. Then when you run an install again, it should clone the repo and respect the symlinks.

[aaronpowell]

With #750 being merged, can you uninstall all current plugins from awesome-copilot and then delete the awesome-copilot entry from ~/.copilot\marketplace-cache on your machine.

[wmmc88]

With #750 being merged, can you uninstall all current plugins from awesome-copilot and then delete the awesome-copilot entry from ~/.copilot\marketplace-cache on your machine.

thanks! this issue has been resolved!