GitHub Copilot

Code assistance inside your development workflow

GitHub Copilot is GitHub's AI assistant for writing and understanding software. It offers inline code suggestions, answers questions about a codebase, reviews changes and works on assigned development tasks. GitHub describes a workflow grounded in a repository's code and history, alongside the issues, pull requests and automations a team already uses.

A task can begin as an issue, move to an agent, return as a pull request and continue through review before merging. That gives developers a place to inspect the proposed work in the same repository context.

Choose assistance or a multi-step task

Copilot's assistive features respond while you work. You can ask for an explanation of code, request help with a development concept or consider a suggested completion. You review and apply those suggestions yourself.

For agentic work, you describe a goal. GitHub says Copilot can research a repository, propose a plan, edit files, run tools and prepare work for review. The documented tasks include refactoring or fixing code, building applications from natural-language descriptions and reviewing pull requests with summaries and suggested improvements.

Give Copilot project context

GitHub documents customization through instructions, reusable prompts and repository context. External tools, agent skills and custom agents can also shape how Copilot works with a project. Its documentation describes third-party coding agents and MCP servers working alongside Copilot, with third-party agents subject to the same security protections and limitations.

You remain responsible for reviewing and approving agent work. GitHub's description treats the prepared change as work for your review, rather than a reason to skip that step.

Check access and organization policies

Available capabilities depend on the Copilot plan, client and organization policies. GitHub offers Copilot Free for exploring core features and paid plans for additional access. Organization administrators can manage member access, available features, file exclusions and usage records.

Read the official Copilot overview and check your Copilot settings before choosing a workflow. This entry describes GitHub Copilot specifically; Microsoft's consumer Copilot is a separate product.