Microsoft’s GitHub unit on Monday introduced a Copilot artificial intelligence agent that can take on specific programming work and inform people once it has finished.
From there, developers can check the agent’s work from GitHub, a widely used repository for code. They can request modifications and then allow GitHub to add the source code to existing files.
The launch, announced at Microsoft’s Build developer conference in Seattle, shows that the technology company wants to make AI a more natural part of the process of enhancing software. The coding agent might help Microsoft distinguish its developer tools from alternatives from companies such as Atlassian and GitLab.
“Using state-of-the-art models, the agent excels at low-to-medium complexity tasks in well-tested codebases, from adding features and fixing bugs to extending tests, refactoring code, and improving documentation,” Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub, wrote in a blog post. Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet AI model powers the coding agent, a GitHub spokesperson said.
When you assign an issue to Copilot in GitHub, the coding agent responds with the eyes emoji. It puts its work in a new file and summarizes its work. Rather than being confined to an application for composing code, the agent appears as just another programmer on the team.
“The GitHub Copilot coding agent fits into our existing workflow and converts specifications to production code in minutes,” Alex Devkar, senior vice president of engineering and analytics at used car retailer Carvana, was quoted as saying in the blog post. “This increases our velocity and enables our team to channel their energy toward higher-level creative work.”
In recent months, developers and people with less technical know-how have adopted “vibe-coding” systems such as Cursor and Windsurf that write programs with a few words of human direction. Much of their use is associated with the creation of new capabilities. GitHub’s coding agent, by comparison, could assist with maintaining code libraries.
GitHub has grown since Microsoft acquired it in 2018, generating over $2 billion in annualized revenue as of last summer.
The GitHub Copilot assistant, which recently gained an agent mode feature to help it compete with Cursor and Windsurf, now has over 15 million users, four times more than a year earlier, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told analysts on a conference call earlier this month.
A free Copilot tier for individuals provides limited access.
The new coding agent won’t be free, though. It will be available to developers with Copilot Pro+ subscriptions and organizations that subscribe to the Copilot Enterprise service tier, GitHub said. It’s available in preview, meaning that GitHub will take early user feedback, the spokesperson said.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/
