Luis Arnauth’s Post

S08E17 - Context Is Everything: Getting the Most from GitHub Copilot with Joydip Kanjilal Software architect and Microsoft MVP Joydip Kanjilal joins Jamie to discuss GitHub Copilot and AI-assisted development — covering what Copilot actually is, why context is everything when prompting it, and the governance and training considerations for teams adopting it.

Found a great resource for those on a GitHub Copilot journey - no matter what UI you put on top - gravity always seems to pull back to the CLI/"Command Line" - the UI that's stood the test of time :) - Quick Start - First Steps - Context and Conversations - Development Workflows - Create Specialized AI Assistants - Automate Repetitive Tasks - Connect to GitHub, Databases & APIs - Putting It All Together https://lnkd.in/ec4hj5Bg #GitHub

Three GitHub repos blew up this week. All three solve problems you probably have right now. 1. microsoft/markitdown Converts PDFs, Word docs, HTML, and images into clean Markdown. If you're building anything with LLMs and need to feed documents into a pipeline, this replaces your messy parsing scripts. One install. Works. 2. coleam00/Archon Defines your AI coding workflow in YAML. Think GitHub Actions but for coding agents. Plan, implement, validate, review, PR. Same steps every time. No more "I got different results than yesterday." Each run happens in an isolated git worktree so nothing bleeds across tasks. 3. multica-ai/multica If you're running multiple Claude Code or Codex sessions and manually switching terminals to track progress, Multica treats them like actual teammates. They claim tasks, report blockers, share skills across the team. Your code stays local. Their servers only coordinate state. None of these require you to change how you work. They slot into what you're already doing and remove the friction you've been tolerating. All three are open source. #AIAssistedDevelopment #GenAI #DeveloperTools #OpenSource #GitHubTrending

🚀 New blog! Did you know you can use your OpenCode Go subscription with GitHub Copilot CLI? By configuring four environment variables, you can bring your own key and use models like Qwen, GLM, and Kimi directly from your terminal. In this blog, you will learn how you can bring your own keys (BYOK) to GitHub Copilot CLI, use models outside of the GitHub Copilot subscription, and make use of autopilot mode with models that are not available by default in GitHub Copilot. 🔗 Read the blog here: https://lnkd.in/e2-ah3TF Enjoy the read! #githubcopilot #githubcopilotcli #opencode #MVPBuzz #cloudmarathoner

Something unexpected I had to do recently... GitHub has been flaky for a few weeks. Short outages, actions stuck in queue... Just unreliable enough to waste your afternoon. The worst part is the first 30 minutes where you're sure it's you. You rewrite the command. Check your git config. Re-auth. Wonder if you broke something earlier. Then you finally open status.github.com and see a red screaming banner 🤦♂️. Looks like AI coding has quietly pushed up the load on all of these tools. More code, shipped faster, through the same few providers - GitHub, Vercel, OpenAI, Anthropic. Incidents happen more often, and they eat more of your day when they do. I set up notifications for Claude a while back and it felt natural. You expect an AI API to have hiccups. But a GitHub status alert? I wouldn't have guessed I'd need one a year ago. That's why we had to integrate more status updates with Slack recently at LowCode Agency to stay up to day with these outages.

I reported a bug to GitHub. They fixed it in 2 days—then revamped their entire extension system. Here's what happened: While using GitHub Copilot CLI's extension system, I discovered a critical issue: creating a hook in an extension would override all global hooks. This broke my hook flows—the system I use to harden security across all my repositories. So I filed an issue. Within one week: • Root cause identified • Fix shipped to production • Complete extension system overhaul released The new capabilities are significant: → Custom slash commands now supported in the SDK → UI elicitation dialogs for structured user input → In-session management via /extensions command → Multi-language SDK support (Node.js, Python, Go, .NET) → Hot reload without full session restart This isn't just a bug fix. It's a signal. GitHub is treating Copilot CLI extensions as a first-class extensibility platform. For teams building internal tooling, security enforcement, or custom workflows—this changes the game. The speed of iteration here is remarkable. From power-user secret to documented, multi-language platform in 9 days. We're entering an era where developer feedback directly shapes the AI tools we use daily. If you're not experimenting with Copilot CLI extensions yet, now is the time. Full story in the video. Link in comments. #GitHubCopilot #DeveloperExperience #DevTools

From Microsoft Community Hub, Supercharge Your Dev Workflows with GitHub Copilot Custom Skills, by sachoudhury "The Problem Every team has those repetitive, multi-step workflows that eat up time: Running a sequence of CLI commands, parsing output, and..." https://lnkd.in/e_rtQdBQ

GitHub was built for 10 engineers pushing 100 commits a week. Your AI agents don't care about that constraint. We've watched teams hit API rate limits before their morning standup. We've watched latency kill agent feedback loops mid-task - the agent is waiting on a response while context evaporates. We've watched the world's most important developer platform strain under a workload it was never designed for. GitHub is remarkable software but it was designed for humans. The gap between "designed for humans" and "works for agents" is enormous: → Rate limits tuned for human hands, not automated pipelines → CI latency acceptable for a dev refreshing a PR, catastrophic for an agent mid-loop → Review interfaces built for human eyes, not machine-readable output → No native concept of agent identity or trust The infra layer for the agentic era isn't GitHub with a better API wrapper. It's a new primitive. Built from scratch. For machines. Guess what? That's what we're building with @Mesa.

Over the past few months I've used Cursor, Claude Code, and GitHub Copilot side by side on the same projects. Each is pretty good at different things, but they share one annoying trait: every one of them wants to read your skills, slash commands, and rules from a different folder. After the third time I caught myself copy-pasting a skill between .cursor/, .claude/, and .github/ (and inevitably missing something), I built a small fix to keep the agents in sync. The idea is simple: - One canonical .agents/ folder at the root of your repo holds every skill, command, and rule. - A tiny sync script mirrors it into the exact paths each tool expects. - No symlinks (which break on Windows without Developer Mode and trip Cursor's symlink bug anyway), no runtime dependency, no git hooks. - Windows PowerShell and macOS/Linux bash are both supported. The repo ships with a small hello-world demo skill you can use to verify all three agents are picking up the same source, then delete once you're set up. If you're juggling multiple AI coding agents in a single workspace, this might save you an afternoon of frustration. MIT licensed and open to feedback. https://lnkd.in/gizgM_Nd #AI #DeveloperTools #OpenSource #Cursor #ClaudeCode

Breaking the Vendor Lock-in: GitHub Copilot Opens the Door to BYOK in VS Code The AI development landscape just took a massive leap toward true interoperability. As of **April 22, 2026**, GitHub has officially enabled **"Bring Your Own Language Model Key" (BYOK)** for Copilot Business and Enterprise users within Visual Studio Code. **Why this is a strategic game-changer for Tech Leaders and CFOs:** 🔹 **Unprecedented Model Flexibility:** Teams are no longer tethered to a single provider. You can now leverage your existing API keys to power VS Code Chat with models from **Anthropic, Google Gemini, OpenAI, and Azure**. Even more impressive? It supports locally running models via **Ollama** and **Foundry Local** for those prioritizing data sovereignty or low latency. 🔹 **The "FinTech" Angle: Cost Optimization:** From a financial perspective, this is a masterstroke in transparency. Usage is billed directly by your chosen provider and **does not count against GitHub Copilot request quotas**. This allows organizations to "right-size" their AI spend—using high-reasoning models (like Claude 4.7) for complex architecture and cheaper, faster models for routine debugging. 🔹 **AI Orchestration over Integration:** By integrating BYOK into VS Code Chat and the plan agent, GitHub is pivoting from being a "tool with AI" to becoming a **central orchestrator** of the global LLM ecosystem. You choose the "brain," and VS Code provides the interface. **Strategic Note:** While this applies to Chat and Agents, standard code completions still run on the native Copilot engine to ensure the millisecond-latency developers expect. **Dive into the full technical changelog here:** https://lnkd.in/dXAh8yeT #AI #GitHub #VSCode #BYOK #SoftwareArchitecture #FinTech #CloudEconomics #DeveloperExperience #OpenAI #Anthropic #Gemini #Ollama #TechStrategy2026 #AIOrchestration