Building with GitHub Copilot

What Are We Going to Cover?

In this guide, you're not just learning how to use GitHub Copilot. You're exploring a shift in how we write, reason about, and collaborate on code. You'll uncover how to level-up your Copilot experience from an autocomplete assistant to an intelligent, agentic teammate that can navigate your codebase, execute tasks, reason across files and even manage your GitHub projects.

You won't find shallow walkthroughs here. Instead, you’ll gain deep insights into the effective and practical knowledge needed to truly benefit from the full potential of GitHub Copilot. Following are some of the key topics we will cover:

• Discover how pair programming evolved from co-located teamwork to remote, collaborative tools, and how AI like Copilot now emulates the Observer role at lower cost.
• Learn the benefits and criticisms of pair programming, and how Copilot offers code quality, mentorship, and early bug detection without doubling developer hours.
• Understand GitHub's transformation into an AI-first platform after the Microsoft acquisition and the launch of Copilot, powered by large language models like GPT and Claude.
• Evaluate pricing tiers and understand which plan fits your use case, from individual to enterprise.
• Learn what languages, IDEs, and tools Copilot supports, and the privacy, security, and compliance standards it adheres to.
• Explore the data and architecture behind Copilot, including its use of transformers and its shift from Codex to modern multi-model support.
• Master how to use inline code completions, comment-based prompting, and strategic patterns to boost daily productivity.
• See how Copilot adapts to your coding style and workflows to become a personalized assistant.
• Use Copilot to write documentation, diagrams, convert code across languages, and debug with clarity.
• Differentiate between Ask, Edit, and Agent modes, and know when to use each based on the task’s complexity and risk.
• Use Ask mode for quick Q&A, Edit for natural language rewrites with full review control, and Agent for full autonomy across the project.
• Learn the difference between Copilot Chat, Copilot Agents, Copilot Code Review, Copilot Coding Agent and other features.
• Make Copilot an autonomous asynchronous teammate that can handle complex tasks with minimal supervision.
• Get introduced to Agent Mode and Coding Agents that go beyond suggestions to carry out autonomous tasks across the codebase.
• Use Copilot to generate commits, review pull requests, and enforce coding standards via copilot-instructions.md.
• Automate GitHub workflows by assigning issues to Copilot, letting it open PRs, fix bugs, and summarize changes.
• Explore the list of available AI models and how to pick the best one for your needs.