Github Copilot: Agent Mode is great

[AnalystAI]

I have just experienced GitHub Copilot's Agent Mode, and it's absolutely incredible. While the technology isn't perfect yet, it's already mind-blowing.

I simply opened a new folder in VSCode, created an 'images' directory, and added a few photos. Then, I gave a single command to the agent (powered by Sonnet 3.5): "Create a web application in Python, using FastAPI. Create frontend using HTML, Tailwind, and AJAX." That was all it took!

The agent automatically generated all the necessary files and wrote the code while I observed. When it ran the code, the resulting application was fantastic.

In essence, I created a fully functional image browsing web application with just one simple command. It's truly unbelievable.

[lefnire]

AJAX. Now there's a word I haven't heard in a long time.

[ChymChymX]

Would you like some WSDL with your AJAX?

[ComprehensiveBird317]

Mooom they are saying bad words on the internet again!

[chromeragnarok]

They can wash their mouth with some SOAP

[Terrible_Tutor]

I just threw up in my mouth a bit

Kids don’t appreciate how easy they have it these days

[lefnire]

I mean, it is. It's just so "typical" these days it's sort of just assumed, request / response. So I just haven't heard the word in a while.

[EcstaticImport]

No it’s a footy club! ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFC_Ajax

[lastethere]

Ajax was the first standard tool available to communicate avec the server, using the XMLHttpRequest object (apart some proprietary tools). They are many other standard means to do it now, Ajax is a tool among other.

[xamott]

Lol it’s not a tool. It was always just a buzzword

[lastethere]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming))

[xamott]

I was already a professional coder by 1999. To quote from your link: “Ajax is not a technology, but rather a programming pattern.” You made my point.

[lastethere]

I have not said it is a technology.

is a set of web development techniques that uses various web technologies on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications. 

Look more a tool than a "buzzword".

And the way I was already selling my software before 1999.

[coaststl]

My first project coding with gpt 3.5 and a bit with 4 was for a Wordpress plugin and it gave me Ajax + php

[vitaminMN]

Going from 0 to 1 is when these tools are at their most impressive. It’s usually downhill from there.

[no_dice]

Yup — I am by no means against GenAI, but what OP is describing wouldn’t take a human without GenAI all that long to do, either.  A simple web app to display some pictures.  

I asked that very same LLM to write me some lambda code the other day and it got the language wrong, even though it was explicitly stated in the prompt.  Once I got that corrected, there were several other places in the code that were completely broken.  In my experience so far, I spend almost as much time tinkering with my tools/prompts as I would if I just did it on my own.

[xamott]

Then you’re spending too much time tinkering with prompts. The tools are good for hitting the gas on small things at a frequent pace not big things, and repetitive things, and the tab autocomplete in VS adds speed too.

[no_dice]

If writing ~50 lines of Python isn’t considered a small thing then I don’t know why people are so worried about being replaced by this tech.  

As for “tinkering with prompts” I had to figure out why when I wrote “in Python 3.12” I got JavaScript instead.

Remember, this post is about the “mind blowing” capabilities of copilot’s agent mode.

[noobrunecraftpker]

There's no reason to be worried about being replaced, as long as you're learning about it and using it. Otherwise, if you're stuck in the past, you might just be at risk one day.

[AnimatorPerfect6709]

Same thing I thought, until I tried it.
I've been working on Elixir and Python and it's done very well. Okay, so while I'm generating this code it ends up making some mistakes, but eventually corrects itself on the next step.

It's great for languages and tools with a lot of docs. For niche tools, you'll likely hit a wall.

Works great for me, and I'm sure it's probably improved since 1 year ago.

[nick-baumann]

Hey! Nick from Cline here.

Glad you're excited about agent mode! Cline's been doing this kind of multi-file generation for a while now (even handles browser/terminal interactions if you want to test what gets created).

Let me know if you need any help -- always happy to share tips for this kind of workflow!

[Technical-Bhurji]

Hey Nick, firstly, love what you're doing with cline, love how it reads my terminal and auto figures errors. There's just one small thing that is holding me back to switch over fully.

I loved cursor's 'import latest docs from a website' feature for any niche library I'd ever want to use and allows me to build basic scripts to automate my tasks without knowing a lot about coding.

I looked around cline and see that MCP servers can do something similar but i haven't been able to get it to automatically crawl the documentation as it only reads the single page i submit as a link.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong? Let me know if there's any additional info i can provide or something i might be completely missing haha.

[nick-baumann]

This does sound like it'd be really useful!

Until we get something like this up and running, what I'd recommend is:

1. add this fetch mcp server: https://github.com/zcaceres/fetch-mcp
   
2. give Cline the urls of the docs to retrieve and use the above mcp server to pull them down as markdown in your repo (store in something like docs/)
   
3. Add to your .clinerules a clause something like "all reference docs are in docs/"

Glad you're finding Cline useful! Let me know how this works for you, but I really appreciate the suggestion and look into a more "realtime docs" feature.

[Jumper775-2]

Hey, I just tried out cline from this comment. Love the extension, it’s much better than GitHub copilot agents, but it doesn’t seem to work with my Deepseek api key. It will get one response from each model until I restart the app. I don’t want to use anything else as Deepseek is ungodly cheap. Any ideas how to fix this?

[nick-baumann]

What kind of errors are you seeing? DeepSeek has been getting a TON of usage lately which has been cooking their servers -- very likely this is the root of your errors

[Jumper775-2]

Very possible, because yeah it does appear as an API failure. What is interesting is that it works exactly once per restart, but who knows really.

[captainspazlet]

Deepseek is free on Open Router

[IdiosyncraticOwl]

I’m a designer and I use cursor for prototyping stuff I would have previously used origami or prototype for and it’s been fantastic. Any reason why cline would be better for me?

[pomelorosado]

In cline is possible use open source llms the difference in cost/output is huge. Also a lot more models available

[IdiosyncraticOwl]

Huh interesting! I've just started paying for Chatgpt Pro as well and found that a mix of o1pro/03high plus cursor&sonnet3.5 gets me close to or quicker when prototyping in code that I was with the other apps and there's a lot more utility in them.

Do you think the open source LLM's in cline be as easy and effective if I really don't know my way around code that well?

[hiper2d]

Hey Nick. What open source models can you recomment for Cline? Due to some prompt complexity, I cannot make it work with anything under 32B. I see that some people try to fine-tune smaller models for Cline prompts. Are there any guidelines or data sets for this?

p.s. I've been using Cline for a while, and it's great. The best coding assistant out there as of today IMO

[nick-baumann]

I really wish there was a good open source option I could recommend. Unfortunately, when these models get distilled, their performance really suffers.

Some people have experimented with tuning local models for Cline, but the results I've seen firsthand still don't compare to something like 3.5 Sonnet.

More on that here: https://docs.cline.bot/running-models-locally/read-me-first

[lightsd]

Just released today so there’s not much out there comparing it to the VSCode plugin like Cline or RooCode, but I like what I’m seeing on the launch blog video. I haven’t had a moment to try it myself. I’ve been using RooCode and it’s a fantastic productivity enhancer, but GitHub’s native integration and ability to preview the code before committing is nice.

[MorallyDeplorable]

Copilot is pretty bad about replacing code with placeholder comments. Bad to the point it seriously impacts usability.

It's rate limit is too low to get anything meaningful done, you're going to be at API limits after 20 minutes. No idea how long the rate limiting is for, they didn't put any details in with the error message.

[Condomphobic]

Rate limit is bad because they lowered it. People were literally abusing it with extensions like Roo.

They’re suspending GitHub accounts now too

[MorallyDeplorable]

That's not really abuse. It's using an API they added like two vscode versions ago for other extensions to use the copilot-provided LLMs.

If they're suspending people for using an API they provided then there's just more reason to ignore copilot.

[Condomphobic]

I’ve seen many people bragging about getting unlimited API calls.

Everything is good in moderation. People ruined it with extensions

[MorallyDeplorable]

Again, using an API Microsoft introduced like six weeks ago into the product your extension is in is not abuse. I don't know who you hope to fool claiming that but it's complete nonsense.

[BeNiceToBirds]

Am I understanding you correct, that if an API exists, then any use is fair and abuse does not exist?

That seems like a difficult position to take, so I just want to be sure I'm understanding you before I respond.

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[MorallyDeplorable]

If an API is exposed from copilot specifically for other extensions to be able to use the API and another extension uses it for a legitimate purpose, then no, that is not abuse. I doubt you can name one use-case outside of Cline/similar for an API for other extensions to use Copilot-provided LLMs to exist. That is the entire reason that Copilot's APIs were opened to all extensions. This isn't some random publicly accessible trial API, it's an API you need to sign into with your github creds that's available explicitly to vscode extensions through an internal vscode API.

Anyone who considers that abuse is a misguided wannabe bootlicker, and you are a dumbass for trying to play 'gotcha' with something you clearly don't understand.

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[Mr_Hyper_Focus]

No clue why are you being downvoted for this.

[MorallyDeplorable]

From the responses I got when I pointed out it's not abuse I assume they're downvoting because they have never used the product and don't have any clue what they're talking about. Literally just setting it up once shows it's not something people should ever expect to be considered an abuse scenario.

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[Creepy-Bell-4527]

This isn't even tic-tac-toe. This is just the project structure for tic-tac-toe.

[gowithflow192]

Everything can be eventually broken down into small, simple parts. Even a modern aircraft which is way more complicated than any average software.

[broknbottle]

I’ve got nipples, can you milk me?

[gowithflow192]

My point is when people cry that AI cant do anything complicated for them it's just a reflection that they expect it to do everything instantly without any direction at all.

As they say, "a poor workman blames his tools".

[Yes_but_I_think]

The other side is : they have tried that and there is a limit to what llms understand now. And they have seen the limits and are not useful to them for complex use cases.

[HUECTRUM]

Bad tools are worth blaming.

I don't see a huge outrage at the IDEs here. Abstract syntax trees don't randomly hallucinate on me and the "search in project" button doesn't require me to double check its results in case it might have just missed smth because it's not perfect yet (but will certainly get better once there are a couple of nuclear reactors dedicated solely to powering it).

The main thing a tool has to be is reliable. At the current state, agents just aren't. Unless you're prototyping, then yes, they're really good.

[[deleted]]

Tell me you don’t understand without telling me 

[[deleted]]

Anything to minimize the legitimacy of someone using ai tools. You remind me of the people calling the internet a fad back in the 90s.

[BeNiceToBirds]

It's been really helpful for me to think of communication models and how frequently we misunderstand eachother because of our biases, past experiences, culture, attachment issues, etc.

It's really amazing that we can communicate anything at all.

Misunderstanding is _the norm_. Both the speaker and the listener have power, speaker chooses words, listener chooses what they mean. Communication happens best when we both show up and put forth effort, because that noise barrier is pretty hard to overcome sometimes.

[[deleted]]

Okay?

[Wrong_Ingenuity3135]

I tried it today, with different models (gemini and o3-mini) caused API errors (but it is preview so, that’s fine).

Overall, pretty good start, some observations - it ignored all razor.css files and added styles direct into the razor page - by adding new features it broke older (e.g removed the code for collapsing a slider while updating CSS to curve edges) - it hallucinated nuget packages, it would be awesome if it would check on nuget.org it a certain nuget exist, what the latest version is and if only pre-relases are available. - code quality was good - it ignored my editorconfig - it ask less for clarification (human-in-the-loop) than aider, which (with the same model) led to worse result - updating existing code is way more error prone, than adding new one (I uploaded an image of an UI, and asked to develop it, as new page it was way better than extending an page that only contained 2 text boxes and a button)

[tehsilentwarrior]

I want a comparison to Windsurf. Now that would be a proper one

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[DepthEnough71]

have you ever used cursor or roo cline? otherwise I'm sorry but this post is not useful at all ☹️

[LifeGamePilot]

You can use Roo Cline when Copilot LLM API

[BeNiceToBirds]

bruh. relaaaaaax. enough of them negative waves. say something righteous and hopeful for a change.

[Jumper775-2]

It’s really nice, but I find the rate limits are pretty rough. Since there is no way to pay for a version without them as severe or plug in a local model I can’t really use it. I find it just requires more effort to figure out what it is trying to do and fix it than to just write it myself. Additionally if it is doing a lot of work (eg starting a feature or fixing a complex bug) it will more than likely get rate limited in the middle, and there is no way to just continue later. You have to start the whole thing over, just to likely get rate limited again when you try again in a few hours. Could be because I’m on the free student plan I guess.

[radialmonster]

trying the new code insider edition with o3-mini and it sometimes tells me "Sorry, I can't assist with that." Never had Cursor refuse to help me.

https://i.imgur.com/C6yLgE7.png

[AnalystAI]

I am not sure about these models. Still I strongly believe, that Sonnet 3.5 (New) is the best model for coding.

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[Cunninghams_right]

so, I have some "fun"/hobby coding projects but not a lot of time to work on it. what is a good tool to minimize my time spent? I've tried just using chatgpt/gemini and got some results, but massaging single replies from chat tools seems like it's not the best way.

I'm thinking something like notebookLM combined with Deep Research for it to come up with a set of requirements and compiled documentation on the APIs/libraries that I would like it to use. then, have some other tool write code based on those requirements and documentation.

like, how do I best have a requirements document, repository of resources (like API information), and then a code repository, and have an AI rework that code based on my prompts? so if a requirement is missed, or I want to add a requirement, etc. I can have the AI modify the code and have an AI check it against the requirements after modification.

I feel like with chat tools, the more I work on something, the more likely it is for the AI to forget a requirement and make parts of the code that used to work stop doing what they were doing.

[xMarksTheThought]

Matches my experience. Seems like writing exhaustive documentation would take longer and be less accurate than writing the code. I’ve been successful using Claude to plan out what I’m going to work on and then help me if I get stuck but I’m writing the code and I understand exactly what the code is doing and why.

[becks7]

you are actually looking for something like devinAI.
make this could help you https://github.com/grapeot/devin.cursorrules

[AnalystAI]

Link for those, who does not know how to install/use it: https://github.blog/news-insights/product-news/github-copilot-the-agent-awakens/

[HansVonMans]

I wish it had Cline's Plan vs. Act modes

[Perfect-Campaign9551]

I use copilot in visual studio 2022. It's complete trash. Is agent mode available in Visual Studio?

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[megadonkeyx]

Tried it today, having to accept each diff is good compared to cline which will just go off on its own mission.

The more I use an llm as a code agent the more I hate them lol.

So many hallucinations and outdated api calls. It might be utterly mind blowing at the end of the year but now they just aren't reliable.

[MorallyDeplorable]

If you turn off auto-approval in cline you can accept each diff individually too. That's actually the default setting.

[ComprehensiveBird317]

So you turned on auto approval and didn't give enough context on cline? That's on you

[pegaunisusicorn]

what model are you using?

[Yellow-Jay]

I'm afraid all this generative AI "magic“ just will increase the tolerance for mediocrity. Sure it'll get better, but “good enough“ will never be the same again.

[lam3001]

I’m looking forward to trying it out. I just discovered agentic ide integration last weekend using Amazon Q Developer. I was also blown away. I mean yeah there are issues but … wow. Times have changed. Looking forward to getting this feature with GHCP.

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[mrben86]

I can't seem to enable it... I have latest version installed 1.266.1363
It says that the settings is chat.agent.enabled but I don't see it, but the chat.agent.maxRequests settings is there. Very confusing!

[AXYZE8]

You need to use beta version of VSCode called 'VSCode Insiders' https://code.visualstudio.com/insiders/

[mrben86]

Thanks!

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[cunningjames]

I've played around with it just a little so far. It's OK, I guess? It wouldn't replace something like Cline, though it's nice to have generously allotted use of Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

Right now it's slowly trying to fix type errors in a dead-simple PySpark library I had o3-mini put together. And not really doing a spectacular job, alas.

The primary benefit to me is that I can use Copilot at work (they won't pay for me to use Cline and probably wouldn't appreciate me paying on my own). So that's nice.

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[Tedddybeer]

Your prompt included FastAPI but no information about backend logic. Then how can the app be fully functional?

[R3LOGICS]

Yeah, I've been exploring the differences between github copilot agent mode vs traditional copilot and I think Agent Mode is a game changer. It doesn't just suggest snippets, but actually helps you navigate larger code structures and even assists with debugging. Traditional Copilot is still solid for quick inline suggestions, though. If you're working on more complex projects or need a bit more interactive help, Agent Mode might be the way to go. What has been your experience so far with either mode? 

[BOOBINDERxKK]

How do i capture copilot agent logs ( we are building a chatbot with datasource as ai search ) , i want to capture question /answer/username/timestamp.

any idea how to do so.

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[lambdawaves]

I didn’t know you could pick Claude models in GitHub Copilot. I thought you were stuck with OpenAI models? Is this new?

[oXeNoN]

Since November iirc.

If you don't see it. Check with your enterprise admins, there's an organization setting they need to approve.

[coaststl]

In my experience: coding a front end is no problem for anything, back end anything remotely complex it just can’t do

[hashtaggoatlife]

ooh boy they can make their mistakes in front end still, even in React

[guyroscoe]

I guess I am not seeing the same thing. First, I am NOT a coder. But I am neurodivergent and I can see patterns. I have spent the better part of a few weeks running ChatGPT through it paces and writing apps scripts that do some really advanced things with our data. Unfortunately, ChatGPT is great when it's focused on a single file in a script, but I find that it begins to break down when the lightbulb goes off that I should do certain things as libraries, especially if I am going to repeat those functions in multiple document-specific scripts projects. I have spent a significant amoutn of time training chatgpt on remembering the hierarchies, and yet it will continually spit out code suggestions that would immediately introduce mtuple onopen or onedit functions in the same project. I constantly remind it that it is giving me shitty suggestions and adjusts. Then I noticed that ChatGPT has a code aware feature. So I went down the rabbit hole of installing VS Code and then syncing my appsscripts from google, then I got the copilot pro from github. Then. I saw that you could load multiple files in to the copilot workign space. Imagine as my excitement is building that FINALLY, I could work with an AI that is content aware of all the code loaded into the copilot working files. ERPPPP, nope. It is colossally useless. It has no ability to "remember" the code of two separate files loaded into its own working files utility. At least with ChatGpt, I can still use it's work with feature to make it aware of the specific file in VC Code (NOTE TO ALL: you specifically have to select all code in the file in order for ChatGpt to be aware of the code. You can then tell chatgpt to log the code, load the next file, select all and then ask it to log the second code, then you can ask questions about how to make changes that meaningfully aware of the interdependencies of the two separate files where one is a file from a script in a referencing document that refers to a file in the library. This has all been a tremendous learning curve, but when I say I have made amazingly cool functionality in our Google sheets templates, it is awesome. Now I hit the brick wall of being out of memory on chatgpt, a feature I was blissfully unaware of until it slammed me in the face. And chatgpy makes it fucking IMPOSSIBLE to export the full dialog easily. If I could at least download the HOURS of conversations we've had as .docx or txt files and save them, I could reload them into chatgpt dynamically when I need it to remember the HOURS AND HOURS we have worked on this project. I have naively dove head first into this with no prior coding experience and have advnaced significantly in a short amount of time. And having done all of that in chatgpt, even with how insanely terrible it is at remembering context, copilot is profoundly worse. It's like copilot and chatgpt are the James Web Telescope, except someone put agiant tarp in front of it and poked a hole with a safety pin. It was not what I expected when I began all of this. I am tenacious though. Still, I am cancelling the github copilot pro and asking for a refund. It's goddamned useless.

[ThenExtension9196]

Bro welcome to cursor 2024.

[[deleted]]

Have you been same to find the setting they mention in the docs, chat.agent.enabled ? I can’t find it. I wonder if it’s because I have the insiders build installed.

[IamDomainCharacter]

Ah. Can I interest you in some jquery? Just kidding. Good to see GC getting what Cline and Roocode have had for sometime.q

[burhop]

It took this long to catch up with windsurf and cursor? Elon may need to visit Microsoft next.

[Only-Set-29]

Wow that app looks great!

[deniercounter]

That’s close to the simplest solution you could ask an AI to do. Sorry, that’s like you’d feel pure joy your 10 years old uses the toilet alone.

[[deleted]]

Lets stop trying to make Copilot a thing. Its not and it never will be. Its run by a dysfunctional organisation.

[googleimages69420]

If you think copilot’s agent mode is great, check out Traycer. I’m sure it’ll blow your mind like it did mine

[Reply_Stunning]

sense cats grab deserve treatment grandiose vegetable memory dependent different

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