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GitHub has expanded the Copilot usage metrics API with agentic CLI activity data covering skills, custom agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, slash commands and plugins. The new fields are intended to help enterprise and organization administrators assess which customizations developers use and how broadly adoption is spreading.
Reports gain two views of adoption
The API now reports both the most-used items and the number of distinct items used. Arrays including totals_by_skill, totals_by_custom_agent, totals_by_mcp, totals_by_slash_cmd and totals_by_plugin return up to five items with the most recorded activity, alongside an interaction_count for each entry.
Separate distinct-use fields count the variety of items used, including those outside the top five. In aggregate reports, an item used by multiple people is counted once across the enterprise or organization, rather than once for every user.
Coverage spans daily and 28-day data
The fields appear in per-user and aggregate 1-day reports, per-user 28-day reports, and the day_totals entries within aggregate 28-day reports. Access is limited to enterprise owners, billing managers, organization owners and custom-role holders with the View Copilot Metrics permission. The Copilot usage metrics policy must also be enabled.
Counts require careful interpretation
The categories do not all measure the same action. Skills, slash commands and plugin skills count invocations; custom agents count starts; and MCP activity counts connection or reconnection attempts, whether successful or failed. Repeated tool calls through an existing MCP connection do not raise the total.
Plugin activity is also included in skill totals, so the two figures should not be added together. Empty arrays and zeroes mean no matching activity, while null or missing fields indicate that customization data is unavailable.
Customer-defined names stay hidden
Reports display names for recognized GitHub-provided items but group customer-defined skills, custom agents, MCP servers and plugins under other. Customer-defined slash commands appear under custom, following Copilot CLI's existing telemetry convention. This limits item-level visibility while preventing private customization names from appearing in reports.
Source: Agentic CLI customizations now in the usage metrics API
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