Personal Skills let you create a skill in Copilot in SharePoint that only you can run. The skill is saved as a SKILL.md file in your own OneDrive rather than in a site’s Agent Assets library, and it’s available to you across SharePoint sites. In my demo the same skill also ran from Copilot in OneDrive, with no changes.
Most of the talk about skills is about site skills, the ones everyone with access to a site can run, a bit like a standard operating procedure for the team. But plenty of the prompts I use every week are mine alone. Personal Skills are on Microsoft’s roadmap (feature 567668) with preview in August 2026 and general availability planned for December 2026.
Site skills and Personal Skills side by side
| Site skill | Personal Skill | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it’s saved | The site’s Agent Assets library, under Skills | Your OneDrive (Documents > Copilot > Agent Assets > Skills in my demo) |
| Who can run it | Anyone who can use the site | Only you |
| Where it’s available | That site | Across SharePoint sites, and in my test, Copilot in OneDrive |
| File format | A folder per skill with a SKILL.md file | The same |
Microsoft’s guide to skills in Copilot in SharePoint sets the limits. A Personal Skill can only act on sites and content you already have permission to access, and like any skill it can’t connect to external systems or run custom code.
Turn a prompt you already use into a Personal Skill
I started with a long contract comparison prompt I run whenever a client sends a contract back. Give it the base contract and the returned version and it produces a clause-by-clause register of what was modified.
- Run the prompt once in Copilot in SharePoint with the two contracts selected, and check the output is what you want.
- Ask Copilot to turn it into a Personal Skill. I asked for a personal skill that takes a base contract and a returned contract, produces the same comparison as a self-contained HTML report, and saves it to a folder in my OneDrive called My Reports. Ask for a site skill instead and it goes in the site’s Agent Assets library.
- Check the card. Copilot shows the skill’s trigger phrases and a button to open its location. Mine opened at Documents > Copilot > Agent Assets > Skills in OneDrive, with a folder named after the skill and the SKILL.md file inside it, including the output folder I’d asked for.
Run it in SharePoint, then in OneDrive
Back in the SharePoint site, I selected the two contracts and used one of the trigger phrases. Copilot picked up the skill and labelled it as my Personal Skill while it ran. The HTML report landed in My Reports: a change register comparing the returned contract with the base, with before-and-after wording for each change.
Then I copied the same two contracts into My Reports in OneDrive, opened Copilot in OneDrive and used the same trigger phrase. Copilot found the Personal Skill there too, ran it, and saved a second report to the same folder. I didn’t change the SKILL.md between the two runs.
Keep a skill personal until it’s earned a place on a site
I’d treat Personal Skills as the place a skill starts. You write it for your own work, run it for a few weeks, and tighten the instructions every time the output isn’t right. My contract comparison fits here: it’s specific to how I review contracts, and nobody else on a site needs it.
When a skill proves useful to the team, recreate it as a site skill in the site’s Agent Assets library, so everyone runs the same instructions instead of their own copied version of the prompt.
Write the output format into the SKILL.md from the start: the sections you want, their order and how the report should look. My two runs came back in different layouts because the skill described what the report should contain but not how to present it. I preferred the OneDrive one, so my next step is updating the skill with that version’s format.
For how skills compare with agents more generally, see Claude Skills vs Copilot Agents.
Frequently asked questions
Where are Personal Skills stored? In your own OneDrive. In my demo, Copilot saved the skill under Documents > Copilot > Agent Assets > Skills, in a folder named after the skill with the SKILL.md file inside. Open the location from the card Copilot shows when it creates the skill.
How do I turn a Personal Skill into a site skill? On the site, ask Copilot in SharePoint to create a site skill from the same instructions. It’s saved in the site’s Agent Assets library under Skills. Creating a site skill needs Edit permission on the site; running one needs View.
Can I run a Personal Skill from Copilot in OneDrive? In my test, yes, with the same trigger phrase on files in my OneDrive. Microsoft’s roadmap item describes Personal Skills working across SharePoint sites and OneDrive.
Can admins turn skills off? There’s no separate admin control to switch skills on or off. By default, skills are available only within the first-party Copilot in SharePoint experience.
Are Personal Skills covered by retention and sensitivity policies? Yes. Personal Skills are files in your OneDrive, so they’re subject to your organisation’s OneDrive retention, sensitivity, auditing and lifecycle policies.
