Agentic DevOps with GitHub Copilot

Agentic DevOps with GitHub Copilot & Azure: A Glimpse into the Future

Yesterday’s session on Agentic DevOps with GitHub Copilot by Hatim Nagarwala was nothing short of a revelation.

As a .NET developer who’s passionate about bridging modern AI tooling with enterprise engineering, this topic hit home, especially when presented by a fellow .NET technologist from Microsoft who understands our daily development challenges.

Why AI Agents Are Becoming Vital in DevOps

The session kicked off with a bold insight:

“Developers spend only 14% of their time actually writing new code.”

The rest? Architecture, Design, Refactoring, Bug Fixing, Planning, Documentation, Testing, CI/CD, and countless repetitive operations. This is where AI Agents enter the scene, not just as copilots for coding, but as orchestrators across the entire DevOps lifecycle.

Key Concepts Covered

1. Agentic DevOps Workflow

The speaker introduced a modern DevOps pipeline infused with intelligent agents:

• Coding Agent: Assists in feature implementation via GitHub Copilot inside VS Code.
• SRE Agent: Observes failures in pipelines or services and automatically responds.
• Copilot Agents:

2. From Code to Operations

The session visually mapped the entire pipeline:

This end-to-end agentic flow showed how each part of DevOps can be assisted or owned by AI agents.        

Live Demo: Cart & Wishlist Features via GitHub Copilot

This was the highlight for many developers in the room.

Using an existing GitHub repo of a cat product supply chain management, Hatim :

• Implemented Cart & Wishlist features end-to-end with the help of GitHub Copilot
• Used Ask Mode to understand unknown parts of the codebase
• Selected specific files as context to guide Copilot without it going rogue
• Ran commands using the integrated Copilot command palette
• Auto-fixed issues, rewrote functions, and tested all within VS Code

The demo reinforced how Copilot is no longer just a code suggester it’s a task-completing, reasoning agent within the developer’s IDE.

Key Microsoft Tools & Concepts Highlighted

• Azure AI Foundry: Microsoft’s agent orchestration system that powers multi-agent systems across Azure.
• App Modernization Tool: Converts legacy .NET Framework apps into modern .NET Core/.NET 8+ both cloud and on-prem workloads.
• Azure Migration Advisor: Identifies code segments (like ADO.NET) that are obsolete in the cloud and helps refactor them.
• GitHub Enterprise Cloud:
• Agent MCPs (Microsoft Copilot Plug-ins): Example shown where agents integrated with ADO for database tasks.

A Word of Caution: Agent Review is Essential

The speaker stressed this repeatedly:

"AI Agents are powerful, but not flawless."

They can:

• Modify multiple files
• Generate commits
• Suggest architectural changes

Review every change before merging to avoid unexpected consequences.

👥 Personal Takeaway

Being in the room with people deeply passionate about intelligent DevOps, and witnessing practical demos instead of theoretical fluff, was a refreshing change. The speaker’s clarity, .NET background, and real-world insights made this session especially relevant.

I had some great conversations during the event and left with ideas buzzing in my head for how to bring agentic workflows into my own projects.

🙏 Thanks & Shoutouts

Grateful to Ahmad Uzair , Vesa Nopanen [MVP] and Hatim Nagarwala for this powerful session on Agentic DevOps with GitHub Copilot & Azure AI.

Let’s continue the conversation:

• Are you already using Copilot in your pipelines?
• What’s your biggest challenge in AI-assisted development?

Drop your thoughts in the comments #DevOps #GitHubCopilot #AgenticAI #AzureAI #AIEngineering #AgentsUnleashed #Microsoft #DotNet