The GitHub Copilot course

This is a hands-on course, not a reference. You’ll spend it inside VS Code with GitHub Copilot, doing one real piece of work end to end: adding an approval workflow to an order-management service — a feature that turns out to need a change to a shared library a dozen other services depend on before you can build it at all. Every lesson takes a problem you’ll really hit (the agent rewrites code in a style your team rejects, a “small” change ripples across twelve consumers, you need work to keep moving while you’re in a meeting) and shows the exact Copilot move that fixes it.

This course is IDE-first. The first-class surface is VS Code + GitHub Copilot — the setup most enterprise engineers are actually allowed to run. JetBrains gets a parity chapter near the end; the Copilot CLI is a footnote, not the spine. If your shop has standardized on Copilot, this is the course written for your constraints.

If you want the spec-level “what is this primitive” view, that’s Foundations. This course is the other half: the muscle memory. And if you’ve done the Claude Code or Codex course, you’ll find a bridge waiting in the Rules chapter — the AGENTS.md you wrote there is read natively here.

All chapters live

The full curriculum is written start to finish. Read it in order to build up from zero, or jump straight to the chapter you need. Lessons may still get sharpened over time.

The curriculum

Twelve chapters, in reading order. Each carries the same two-repo project one stretch further — start at the top, or pick the problem in front of you.

1 · Getting started Install Copilot in VS Code, sign in, learn the two ways in — ghost-text completions and the Chat view — and ship a first small reviewed change to a service you've just inherited.

2 · The modes Copilot's signature shape: Ask, Edit, Agent, and Plan. Understand inherited code, make a scoped change, hand off a whole task, and preview a plan before a line is written — picking the mode to match what's at stake.

3 · Rules Stop hand-feeding Copilot your conventions. copilot-instructions.md, path-specific applyTo rules, the hierarchy — and the bridge: the AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md you wrote for another tool is read natively here.

4 · Prompt files Codify a repeated multi-step task as a .prompt.md you invoke with a slash command — and learn when an invoked prompt beats an always-on rule.

5 · Custom agents & subagents The careful work begins. Build a reusable reviewer agent for the shared library and fan subagents out to check a dozen consumers for breakage before you ship.

6 · Skills Package a team procedure as a portable SKILL.md the agent invokes itself — the same cross-tool standard your other agents already understand.

7 · Extending: MCP Wire an MCP server so Copilot can reach an internal system — a registry or issue tracker — instead of you pasting the answer. Connect, trust, and scope it to one agent.

8 · Permissions & autonomy The dial on the blast-radius judgment: default, bypass, and autopilot. Tight on the shared library, loose on your own app — same engineer, opposite settings.

9 · Models & credits The other dial — how much the agent thinks. The per-request picker, Auto selection, and spending premium requests where the reasoning actually pays.

10 · Automation: the cloud agent Copilot leaves the editor. Assign follow-up issues to the async cloud coding agent, review the draft PRs it opens, and customize the environment it runs in.

11 · Beyond VS Code The same two-repo work in a JetBrains IDE, parity called out feature by feature — plus a short footnote on the Copilot CLI. Your rules and skills come along untouched.

12 · Daily workflow A day moving between careful-library mode and fast-app mode — then a look back across the whole arc, and where to go next.

How to read it

Each chapter carries one running project — two repos, shared-lib and orders-service, that you’ve just inherited on a new team — and the lessons build on each other: each one picks up a problem the last one left you with, adds a move to your repertoire, and hands off to the next.

So you get the most out of a chapter by reading it in order. But each lesson still stands on its own if you drop in from a search with one specific problem in front of you — you’ll just miss the running story.

What you won’t find is a fixed template stamped onto every lesson. Some need a long worked transcript, some a single setting and a warning, some a digression into why Copilot behaves the way it does. The shape follows the content, the way a good book varies its chapters.