VS Code & GitHub Copilot Announcements with Burke Holland and Harald Kirschner

Key takeaways

Agent mode in GitHub Copilot allows for autonomous coding assistance, enabling users to create and modify applications directly within VS Code.
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) enhances the capabilities of GitHub Copilot by integrating external tools and context, making the coding process more efficient.
Next Edit Suggestions (NES) offers a predictive editing experience, allowing developers to quickly implement changes without losing their workflow.
The episode showcases how Microsoft is continuously evolving GitHub Copilot to meet the needs of developers through innovation and community engagement.

Summary

Introduction to New Features in VS Code and GitHub Copilot

In this episode, host T.J. Antoll welcomes Jack Harrington, Paige Neidring House, and special guests Burke Holland and Harold Kirschner from Microsoft. The discussion revolves around the exciting new features being introduced in GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code (VS Code), particularly the highly anticipated 'agent mode' which enhances the developers' ability to build applications efficiently by automating many aspects of coding.

Understanding GitHub Copilot and Agent Mode

Burke describes GitHub Copilot as an AI-powered coding assistant that integrates into developers' editors, primarily VS Code. Agent mode allows it to perform tasks autonomously, such as creating applications or making complex changes to existing code, interacting with the terminal, and guiding developers through the process. This feature marks a significant shift in how developers can leverage AI in their coding workflows, making the environment more intuitive and less reliant on manual input.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) Integration

A major enhancement discussed is the MCP, which allows GitHub Copilot to incorporate external context tools and services into its workflow. Burke and Harold elaborate on how this feature enables developers to use existing systems and knowledge bases while building applications, enhancing the assistant's capabilities to provide relevant and actionable suggestions. This integration improves collaboration with community standards and the potential for custom MCP servers that developers can create.

Next Edit Suggestions (NES) and Enhanced User Experience

The new Next Edit Suggestions (NES) feature is designed to streamline the coding experience by predicting subsequent necessary changes based on the developer's previous edits. This allows users to maintain a smoother workflow as GitHub Copilot will automatically present related changes, reducing the need for context-switching. Burke emphasizes the advancements in speed and user interaction with these suggestions, ensuring developers stay focused on their tasks.

Show notes

Special guests Burke Holland and Harald Kirschner from Microsoft join us on this episode to share the new GitHub Copilot features coming to VS Code and beyond.

First up: agent mode is now available to all users in VS Code. GitHub Copilot gets a serious upgrade as it can now create new apps from scratch, handle complex changes to existing code across multiple files, run (and debug) tests from the command line, and guide you through its reasoning.

Additionally, VS Code and GH Copilot now offer MCP (model context protocol) for agent mode. This means that GitHub Copilot can use context tools and services while building an application. There’s a host of already available community-standard MCP servers available on github.com or devs can build their own and GH Copilot will be able to use it to enhance its knowledge and capabilities.

Next Edit Suggestions (NES) lands in GH Copilot as well, so when devs make one change to a file Copilot predicts the changes that follow and presents them in sequence. Not only are ghost-text suggestions faster to appear to users in VS Code, but Copilot is also better at understanding what other changes are needed to support the new code.

Special Guests:

Burke Holland, Principal Developer Advocate at Microsoft running the VS Code developer community team
Harald Kirschner, Principal Product Manager at Microsoft for VS Code and GitHub Copilot

Relevant Links:

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

Paige - Apple AirPods Pro Gen 2
Jack - Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3
TJ - Trip to the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park
Burke - Insta 360 webcam
Harald - Springtime in CA

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.