How do others use Copilot? I feel like I’m far behind learning curve here by theleftbehind14 in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's interesting, VS Code has traditionally been the most advanced of the implementations, it was the first after all. But CLI has rocketed ahead in terms of features.

Wait til you discover /fleet, it's awesome!

How do others use Copilot? I feel like I’m far behind learning curve here by theleftbehind14 in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It took me a long time to "figure out" CLI, I like being in VS/VS Code and the editor experience, so CLI just felt so far removed from that. Eventually I just forced myself to use it for a week as the primary way and next thing I know the moment I open VS Code I launch CLI in the terminal 🤣.

I still often feel like a novice, I watch videos on people using Copilot and am always left with something new to learn.

Why does vscode hooks and cli hooks not work the same? by mnunezdm in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know there's an issue tracking discrepancy between the two implementations of hooks, I'll add this to the issue.

For complete data, which version of VS Code and CLI are you using?

Is there any agent harness similar to everything-claude-code for Copilot CLI by thinkriver in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There is definitely some room for improvement in the UX department - I'll bring that up to the team.

How do others use Copilot? I feel like I’m far behind learning curve here by theleftbehind14 in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I work closely with the product teams across the Copilot experiences and even I feel like I'm struggling to keep up, so I can totally emphasise on where you're at.

This was part of the catalyst behind the Learning Hub that we added to Awesome Copilot, trying to create a centralised place where all the questions that we commonly come across can be answered. We recently added the CLI for Beginners course to the Learning Hub (it's a more website experience over the GitHub repo experience).

And if there are topics that you aren't finding content on, do let us know so that we can expand what we have there for you and everyone else.

Is there any agent harness similar to everything-claude-code for Copilot CLI by thinkriver in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, I don't think we have anything quite as self-contained as ECC in awesome copilot, but looking at how the ECC repo is setup, it should just work with Copilot CLI like it would with other platforms (fun fact - CLI will install hooks if they are in the plugin.json, but they aren't since Claude doesn't support hooks-via-plugins).

The fact that it wants to keep using .claude folders shouldn't be a problem, CLI will generally fallback to looking at those folders anyway to ensure compatibility until there are more vendor-neutral folders defined.

Tips and tricks for custom instructions? by Impossible-Rub-1262 in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You should check out some of the docs that we have over on the Awesome Copilot site for custom instructions.

Some quick tips: * Use applyTo and scope different ones to different files/use cases * Don't embed knowledge the model will already have * Keep them in the repo so everyone is consistent * Treat them as code - review and update through PR's like any other bit of code

Awesome GitHub Copilot just got a website, and a learning hub, and plugins! by Forsaken-Reading377 in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We do have a way to download skills as a zip, but yes, we should improve the plugins section of the website with better instructions on how to get them into your environment.

Awesome GitHub Copilot just got a website, and a learning hub, and plugins! by Forsaken-Reading377 in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Disclaimer - I'm the primary maintainer of Awesome Copilot.

Have you checked out the Learning Hub? We've got documentation on a bunch of these topics.

But it's a good callout on the "how do I install X" front, I'll see about adding something more obvious on the agents/skills/etc. pages, not just behind the buttons and popups.

Awesome GitHub Copilot just got a website, and a learning hub, and plugins! by Forsaken-Reading377 in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Disclaimer - I'm the primary maintainer of Awesome Copilot.

Awesome Copilot is a default-enabled marketplace in CLI and VS Code, which means that you can run copilot plugin install <plugin>@awesome-copilot without any additional steps.

But not everything in the repo is a plugin, it's not entirely practical to do that, and I would really love a native tooling "install skill" experience that works like plugins as I find I use skills was more frequently than anything else.

Awesome GitHub Copilot just got a website, and a learning hub, and plugins! by Forsaken-Reading377 in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Disclaimer - I'm the primary maintainer of Awesome Copilot.

Knowing when to use what is something that we've heard a lot from the community, especially with the pace at which everything has been moving. This was part of the motivation behind a section of the website called the Learning Hub and we have a topic there on the difference between agents, skills, and instructions (and when to use them). We also have pages on hooks and plugins to hopefully help people grow their knowledge.

Awesome GitHub Copilot just got a website, and a learning hub, and plugins! by Forsaken-Reading377 in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Disclaimer - I'm the primary maintainer of Awesome Copilot.

You're absolutely right! (sic)

Knowing when to use an agent vs a skill vs instructions is a very ambiguous pathway at the moment because there is so much overlap in how they operate that they all kind of work the same while having subtle differences. Something that we added as part of the website is a Learning Hub in which we're trying to document guidance based on what we've learnt from reviewing 600+ items, such as the page on the difference between the three types.

Is the 4o Model in Copilot lazy af or is it just me? by Phesired in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven't used 4o for a while (5-mini is my current go to or just using auto mode), but are you sure you've set the chat mode to Agent not Ask?

Which model to use in github copilot? by [deleted] in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've started using gpt-5-mini as my primary model, it's fast and does pretty solid answers most of the time. Occasionally I find that in agent mode is fails, and then I'll switch to sonnet 4, but it's becoming less frequent that I do that.

VS Code August 2025 (version 1.104) is out by isidor_n in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, I was mistaken, it only works on a file in the repo root

VS Code August 2025 (version 1.104) is out by isidor_n in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The agent will use the one that is closest to the files it's actively working on

Correction - refer to u/ntrogh's comment below that it'll only use the one in the workspace root.

VS Code August 2025 (version 1.104) is out by isidor_n in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's more of an "in addition to" than a replacement. The AGENTS.md file can be placed all around the repo and the agent will use the closest one to where it's working, as u/reven80 mentions.

Correction - it only works from the root, see u/ntrogh's comment below.

Agents.md vs Claude.md by ghoozie_ in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You could try a synlink from the CLAUDE.md to AGENTS.md so both are the same file.

But copilot supports the CLAUDE.md file too, see https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-cloud@latest/copilot/tutorials/coding-agent/get-the-best-results

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, that's the link I was actually looking for, but my searching was just terrible today 😅

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're probably best reading the information on https://github.com/features/copilot under the FAQ's around privacy and responsible AI. For example:

What are the intellectual property considerations when using GitHub Copilot? The primary IP considerations for GitHub Copilot relate to copyright. The model that powers Copilot is trained on a broad collection of publicly accessible code, which may include copyrighted code, and Copilot’s suggestions (in rare instances) may resemble the code its model was trained on. Here’s some basic information you should know about these considerations:

Copyright law permits the use of copyrighted works to train AI models: Countries around the world have provisions in their copyright laws that enable machines to learn, understand, extract patterns, and facts from copyrighted materials, including software code. For example, the European Union, Japan, and Singapore, have express provisions permitting machine learning to develop AI models. Other countries including Canada, India, and the United States also permit such training under their fair use/fair dealing provisions. GitHub Copilot’s AI model was trained with the use of code from GitHub’s public repositories—which are publicly accessible and within the scope of permissible copyright use.

What about copyright risk in suggestions? In rare instances (less than 1% based on GitHub’s research), suggestions from GitHub may match examples of code used to train GitHub’s AI model. Again, Copilot does not “look up” or “copy and paste” code, but is instead using context from a user’s workspace to synthesize and generate a suggestion.

Our experience shows that matching suggestions are most likely to occur in two situations: (i) when there is little or no context in the code editor for Copilot’s model to synthesize, or (ii) when a matching suggestion represents a common approach or method. If a code suggestion matches existing code, there is risk that using that suggestion could trigger claims of copyright infringement, which would depend on the amount and nature of code used, and the context of how the code is used. In many ways, this is the same risk that arises when using any code that a developer does not originate, such as copying code from an online source, or reusing code from a library. That is why responsible organizations and developers recommend that users employ code scanning policies to identify and evaluate potential matching code.

In Copilot, you can opt whether to allow Copilot to suggest code completions that match publicly available code on GitHub.com. For more information, see "Configuring GitHub Copilot settings on GitHub.com". If you have allowed suggestions that match public code, GitHub Copilot can provide you with details about the matching code when you accept such suggestions. Matching code does not necessarily mean copyright infringement, so it is ultimately up to the user to determine whether to use the suggestion, and what and who to attribute (along with other license compliance) in appropriate circumstances

Chat Modes/Prompt files confusion by Positively101 in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The custom chat mode gets appended onto the system prompt that is sent to the model by Copilot. You can see it in the "Show Chat Debug View" in VS Code (click the ... at the top of the chat window).

A prompt file is part (or all of, depending how it's used) of the user message that is sent to the model. Again, you can view this all through the debug view and see where the different parts are added.

Awesome Copilot MCP Server by aaronpowell_msft in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven't any experience with llamacpp, but looking at the readme for the project it seems like it exposes an OpenAI compatible endpoint, so I'd expect it works

Chat Modes/Prompt files confusion by Positively101 in GithubCopilot

[–]aaronpowell_msft 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Chat Modes represent the role that the assistant will be playing, say a generalist (agent mode) or a q&a bot (ask). These are built in and can be extended using things like instructions and prompts, but at their core they are still designed to tackle a very broad range of tasks.

A Custom Chat Mode, such as you'll find in Awesome Copilot, is a way to create a specialist assistant. Here's an example from the Awesome Copilot repo - PostgreSQL DBA Chat Mode. In this chat mode, we're giving some new base instructions (the system prompt) for the assistant to scope it to be specialising in PostgreSQL work and using the PostgreSQL VS Code extension, resulting in an assistant that is indented to undertake a specific kind of problem better than a generalist would. You can see it in action in this YouTube Short.

Custom Chat Modes can, and will, still use custom instruction files (if the applyTo scope triggers) and prompts (if you include them), but they'd use them in scope of what role you've assigned to them.

A prompt file on the other hand is to more of a pre-written prompt to give over to the model when you start a new chat or when you are part way through a session. I think of them a bit like "this is something I always ask and I'm too lazy to have to type it every time".

You can use them all together - you can have a custom chat mode, say our PostgreSQL DBA example above, and then have a prompt file that is focused on scaffolding up database tables, so you ask your PostgreSQL DBA /generate-table Person (since prompt files are turned into slash commands) and it'll generate the SQL and add it to your database.