Install
What you need
| VS Code 1.103 or newer | the extension will not activate below this |
The YAML extension (redhat.vscode-yaml) |
installed automatically alongside this one — it is a real extension dependency, unlike Copilot below. It is what gives tasks.yml and workflows/*.yml schema validation and autocomplete as you type |
| PowerShell | only for tasks that declare shell: pwsh, and for the pwsh@1 plugin |
| A GitHub Copilot sign-in and the Copilot CLI | only for AI tasks and specs on the default ghcp provider. npm install -g @github/copilot |
A Claude sign-in (or ANTHROPIC_API_KEY) and the Claude Code CLI |
only for AI tasks saying provider: claude. npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code |
| The vendor’s own CLI | only for AI tasks naming one of the seven ACP providers — kiro-cli, gemini-cli, codex-cli, cursor-cli, opencode-cli, copilot-cli, claude-cli |
The two SDK providers in full — where the credential comes from, what to do when the CLI is somewhere unusual, and what each failure means: Agent SDKs. The ACP ones: Agent Client Protocol.
Everything else works with none of the above. No AI vendor is 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
Kiro, VSCodium and other Code-OSS builds
Those editors cannot see the Microsoft marketplace. The same build is published to Open VSX, which is the registry they search:
Search Local Workflows in that editor’s Extensions view, or install
the .vsix from the Open VSX page by hand. Nothing in the extension is
different between the two registries; Kiro IDE runs it unchanged.
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 activates once VS Code finishes starting up. With no workflow files in the workspace it just sits idle until you open one of its views.