Final week, OpenAI introduced a cloud-based software program engineering agent known as Codex that may carry out a number of software program engineering duties in parallel. Now, Microsoft’s GitHub is asserting a competitor to Codex. At Construct 2025, GitHub introduced the GitHub Copilot coding agent, which may implement a process or concern within the background with GitHub Actions.

The GitHub Copilot coding agent is the evolution of Undertaking Padawan, which was launched earlier this yr. Builders can assign a GitHub concern to the Copilot coding agent on github.com, in GitHub Cellular, or via the GitHub CLI. To begin the work, the agent will robotically spin up a completely customizable growth surroundings powered by GitHub Actions.

Whereas the agent is engaged on the problem, builders will have the ability to monitor its actions through agent session logs. As soon as the agent has accomplished its work, it would increase a pull request, which would require human approval earlier than any CI/CD workflows are run.

Builders may carry information and capabilities from exterior of GitHub to the coding agent utilizing the Mannequin Context Protocol (MCP). The GitHub group highlighted that the coding agent may settle for photographs as enter, which can enable builders to share screenshots of a bug or mockups to implement a brand new characteristic.

Thomas Dohmke, GitHub CEO, wrote the next relating to the GitHub Copilot coding agent launch:

With the brand new coding agent, Copilot lives the place builders collaborate with one another: proper inside GitHub. You may hand off time-consuming however boring duties to Copilot, which can use pull requests, CI/CD, and your whole current tooling whilst you concentrate on the attention-grabbing work.

GitHub claims that this new Copilot coding agent will carry out higher at low-to-medium complexity duties in well-tested codebases. The Copilot coding agent is now rolling out to all Copilot Enterprise and Copilot Professional+ customers. The GitHub group additionally introduced that the Copilot agent mode is coming to common IDEs, together with Xcode, Eclipse, and JetBrains.