Microsoft’s GitHub AI Agent Now Ships With ’Vibe Coding’—Because Typing Is So 2024
GitHub’s new AI agent cuts keystrokes by 50%—or 100% if you count developers’ will to live.
Subheader: The ’Autopilot for Code’ Just Got a Personality Transplant
Microsoft’s latest update injects ’artisanal’ randomness into code suggestions—like a barista who won’t stop telling you about their improv class. Early adopters report the AI now suggests blockchain solutions 37% more aggressively (whether you’re building a wallet or a to-do app).
Closing jab: VCs are already funding startups to automate the automation—because nothing says ’product-market fit’ like layers of abstraction chasing their own tail.
Vibe away
Microsoft acquired GitHub in 2018. In 2021, it launched GitHub Copilot in collaboration with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.
The tool is available natively in GitHub or through Microsoft’s open-source code editor, VS Code. While GitHub Copilot is free for all users, only Pro and Pro+ subscribers will have unlimited access to the chatbot’s more advanced features.
Last week, OpenAI launched the latest version of its Codex, a free and open-source cloud-based platform for AI agents.
These agents are designed to handle multiple programming tasks simultaneously, reducing the need for large development teams.
“Vibe coding” has become popular of late, but AI’s influence on code stretches back years before the phrase caught on.
Emad Mostaque, former CEO of Stability AI, suggested in 2023 that 41% of GitHub’s code was AI-generated.
In 2024, a GitHub report showed a 59% increase in contributions to generative AI projects and a 98% rise in new projects. A separate survey by developer platform Opsera found that more than 80% of respondents had installed the GitHub Copilot IDE extension, reflecting the technology’s growing adoption.
In a live demo during Monday’s keynote, Nadella showed Copilot assigning a GitHub issue, demonstrating how it operates in a sandboxed environment with built-in security protocols. Once Copilot is done working, the program notifies the user so that they can review the code.
“Copilot can now learn your company’s unique tone and language,” Nadella said in a follow-up post on X. “It is all about taking that expertise you have as a firm and further amplifying it so everyone has access.”
To support a broader community of developers, Nadella said Microsoft is opening up Copilot’s foundational tools so others can build their own specialized agents.
"We’re also making these Core capabilities available to partners to help create an open and secure ecosystem of agents,” he said. “Whether for SRE, code review, or the many other things developers will build."
Even as GitHub Copilot evolves into a fully autonomous coding agent, GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke said the program is designed to operate transparently and securely, to fit into existing developer workflows.
“As the agent works, it pushes commits to a draft pull request, and you can track it every step of the way through the agent session logs,” Dohmke said in a statement.
“Having Copilot on your team doesn’t mean weakening your security posture—existing policies like branch protections still apply in exactly the way you’d expect,” he added.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair and Andrew Hayward
