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hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Agent mode arrives, for better or worse [theregister.com]:

Microsoft's GitHub Copilot can now act as a coding agent, capable of implementing tasks or addressing posted issues within the code hosting site.

What distinguishes a coding agent from an AI assistant is that it can iterate over its own output, possibly correcting errors, and can infer tasks that have not been specified to complete a prompted task.

But wait, further clarification is required. Having evidently inherited Microsoft's penchant for confusing names, the GitHub Copilot coding agent is not the same thing as the GitHub Copilot agent mode, which debuted [github.blog] in February.

Agent mode refers to synchronous (real-time) collaboration. You set a goal and the AI helps you get there. The coding agent is for asynchronous work – you delegate tasks, the coding agent then sets off on its own to do them while you do other things.

"Embedded directly into GitHub, the agent starts its work when you assign a GitHub issue to Copilot," said Thomas Dohmke, GitHub CEO, in a blog post provided to The Register ahead of the feature launch, to coincide with this year's Microsoft Build conference [microsoft.com].

"The agent spins up a secure and fully customizable development environment powered by GitHub Actions. 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."

Basically, once given a command, the agent uses GitHub Actions to boot a virtual machine. It then clones the relevant repository, sets up the development environment, scours the codebase, and pushes changes to a draft pull request. And this process can be traced in session log records.

Available to Copilot Enterprise and Copilot Pro+ users, Dohmke insists that agents do not weaken organizational security posture because existing policies still apply and agent-authored pull requests still require human approval before they're run.

By default, the agent can only push code to branches it has created. As a further backstop, the developer who asked the agent to open a pull request is not allowed to approve it. The agent's internet access is limited to predefined trusted destinations and GitHub Actions workflows require approval before they will run.

With GitHub as its jurisdiction, Copilot's agent interactions can be used to automate various development-related site interactions via github.com, in GitHub Mobile, or through the GitHub CLI.

But the agent can also be configured to work with MCP (model context protocol) servers in order to connect to external resources. And it can respond to input beyond text, thanks to vision capabilities in the underlying AI models. So it can interpret screenshots of desired design patterns, for example.

"With its autonomous coding agent, GitHub is looking to shift Copilot from an in-editor assistant to a genuine collaborator in the development process," said Kate Holterhoff, senior analyst at RedMonk, in a statement provided by GitHub. "This evolution aims to enable teams to delegate implementation tasks and thereby achieve a more efficient allocation of developer resources across the software lifecycle."

GitHub claims it has used the Copilot code agent in its own operations to handle maintenance tasks, freeing its billing team to pursue features that add value. The biz also says the Copilot agent reduced the amount of time required to get engineers up to speed with its AI models.

GitHub found various people to say nice things about the Copilot agent. We'll leave it at that.

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