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GitHub Copilot Agent mode (Preview)

Agents are the next big thing in GenAI and with the introduction of Agent mode last week, agentic AI are now coming to GitHub Copilot as well.

In agent mode, Copilot can reason and iterate on its own code. It can automatically infer and execute subtasks needed to complete the main task you requested.

At the moment of writing this post, the new agent mode is still in preview. So you need to download the VS Code Insiders version available here: Download Visual Studio Code Insiders

Once the installation has completed, you can active the agent mode through the Copilot settings:

  • Go to File –> Preferences –> Settings:

 

  • Search for ‘chat agent’ and make sure that the Agent mode checkbox is checked:

OK, we are good to go.

  • Open the Copilot Chat window and switch to the Edits view:

 

  • At the bottom of the Edits view, switch from the Edit mode to the Agent mode:
  • Similar to Copilot edits mode, we select the files that should be included in the working set. Now we can ask the agent to do his work:

 

  • It can take some time before the agent is ready so be patient. After a while the agent is done with his changes. Now we can verify and accept the changes (if they are ok) or discard them:

 

  • In this case the agent made some mistakes, so I ask the agent to try again:

 

  • Unfortunately, still some mistakes. I switched to Claude Sonnet and gave an extra hint on what’s missing:

 

  • It seems that Claude Sonnet did a better job and finally got the result I wanted.

 

That’s enough for a first try of the new agent mode. I’ll try in on some other scenario’s in the future…

Also have a look at the following video (the agent functionality is demonstrated starting from 1:30):

More information

GitHub Copilot: The agent awakens - The GitHub Blog

Use GitHub Copilot Agent Mode to create a Copilot Chat application in 5 minutes

Download Visual Studio Code Insiders

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