Install
What you need
| VS Code 1.103 or newer | the extension will not activate below this |
| PowerShell | only for tasks that declare shell: pwsh, and for the pwsh@1 plugin |
| A GitHub Copilot sign-in | only for AI tasks and for specs — which is all of spec-driven development |
| The GitHub Copilot CLI | the same cases as above. npm install -g @github/copilot |
Everything else works with none of the above. Copilot is deliberately not declared as an extension dependency, because that field force-installs it — you should not get Copilot pushed onto you for tasks you may never write.
Why the CLI, and not the Copilot extension
The extension does not call the GitHub Copilot extension — it drives the Copilot CLI, a separate program, through GitHub’s own SDK. So having Copilot’s editor extension installed and signed in buys nothing here, and not having it costs nothing.
The CLI is ~340 MB per platform, which is why it is a prerequisite you install rather than something bundled — the same call PowerShell gets. Nothing checks for it until the first AI task actually runs, and when one does without it, the failure says exactly this.
Installing
From the Marketplace:
Local Workflows on the VS Code Marketplace
Or search Local Workflows in the Extensions view, or from a terminal:
code --install-extension local-workflows.local-workflows
Checking it worked
A Local Workflows icon appears in the Activity Bar. Click it. With no
workflow files in the workspace yet you get an empty state offering to
create one — which is exactly where
your first tasks.yml
starts.
The extension only activates when one of its views is opened, so nothing runs in a workspace you never point it at.