Agent Skills¶
Skills teach your AI assistant how to use Excel MCP Server well. A skill is a small package of guidance and examples that your coding agent (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, Claude Code, and others) loads automatically — so it knows the right workflow, the correct parameters, and the common gotchas without you having to spell them out each time. Installing a skill makes the assistant noticeably more reliable at driving Excel.
There are two packages — pick the one that matches how you connect to Excel (or install both):
| Skill | Component | Distribution | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| excel-cli | CLI Tool (excelcli.exe) | Copilot plugin excel-cli, direct skill extraction | Coding agents - token-efficient, --help discoverable |
| excel-mcp | MCP Server (mcp-excel.exe) | Copilot plugin excel-mcp, VS Code extension, MCPB, direct skill extraction | Conversational AI - rich tool schemas |
Shared guidance: skills/shared/*.md — source of truth for both skills (auto-copied to each skill's references/ folder)
Note: Legacy npm packages (
excel-cli-skill,excel-mcp-skill) are no longer published. Use the methods below instead.
Installation¶
GitHub Copilot Plugins (Recommended):
copilot plugin marketplace add sbroenne/mcp-server-excel-plugins
copilot plugin install excel-mcp@mcp-server-excel-plugins
copilot plugin install excel-cli@mcp-server-excel-plugins
Direct skill extraction (for agents without plugin support):
## Via npx (interactive — select excel-cli, excel-mcp, or both)
npx skills add sbroenne/mcp-server-excel
## Or specify directly
npx skills add sbroenne/mcp-server-excel --skill excel-cli
npx skills add sbroenne/mcp-server-excel --skill excel-mcp
Via VS Code Extension (auto-installs excel-mcp): Install the Excel MCP VS Code Extension — it registers the excel-mcp skill via chatSkills. For the excel-cli skill, use the plugin or npx skills methods above.