REPORTED DEVELOPMENT
Declarative Agent manifest v1.9 supports up to eight Agent Skills directories containing SKILL.md and Microsoft Fabric as an agent data source.
Microsoft's changelog says instructions is optional, while the v1.9 descriptive table calls it mandatory. The official JSON schema supports the optional interpretation, requiring only version, name and description. No tenant test established whether all services accept manifests without instructions.
WHY IT MATTERS TO THE MARKET
Published-schema conformity and actual service acceptance are different. Conflicting documentation should remain visible rather than silently treated as consistent.