When Anthropic introduced Claude Skills, they demonstrated how specialized instruction sets could transform AI assistants into domain experts. But not every developer can use Claude at work. Many companies have IT restrictions or security policies that prevent the use of a large LLM like Anthropic's. Or they may just want to avoid context-switching between a million different AI tools. Count me as one of those devs.
Gentoo's official migration from Microsoft-owned GitHub to Codeberg is underway, as the Linux distribution fulfills a pledge to ditch the code shack due to "continuous attempts to force Copilot usage for our repositories." The decision was made public last month, when Gentoo confirmed it intended to migrate repository mirrors and pull request contributions to the new home. On February 16, the organization revealed it now had a presence on Codeberg, where contributions could be submitted.
Custom agents in GitHub Copilot are tailored versions of the Copilot coding agent that you can define once to follow your own workflows, coding conventions, and tool preferences. They act like specialized teammates that consistently apply your team's standards instead of you repeating the same instructions each time. You configure custom agents using Markdown-based agent profiles that specify prompts, tools, and behaviors.
Every few months, the developer tool hype machine finds a new hero. In 2023, it was GitHub Copilot, the AI pair programmer that made autocomplete feel like magic. In 2024, the vibe shifted to Cursor and the new class of AI-first editors. And now, at least on X, Google's "agent-first" Antigravity is being pitched as the next inevitable thing. Meanwhile, the model layer keeps whiplashing.
C# 14, included in the .NET 10 SDK, introduces file-based apps, meaning applications contained in a single file with a .cs extension. These look a lot like scripts, and support #! directives on Unix-like platforms, enabling invocation via the ./ prefix when marked as executable. This could be useful for utilities, but the thinking behind this is more about attracting newcomers to the language by simplifying the first steps. Single file applications can be converted to full projects using the new command, dotnet project convert.
The core challenges impacting developer productivity and experience are clear. In the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, nearly half (45%) of developers spend more time debugging AI-generated code than writing it. This, coupled with constant context-switching and manual troubleshooting, leads to significant time loss. New Relic's unified Intelligent Observability Platform addresses these issues by integrating disparate systems and performance data, providing crucial context, and driving actionable insights.
Microsoft announced in August 2025 that support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is generally available in Visual Studio. MCP enables AI agents within Visual Studio to connect to external tools and services via a consistent protocol. The announcement notes that Visual Studio now provides new means to configure and manage MCP servers. MCP, introduced by Anthropic in 2024, is an open standard that simplifies interactions between AI‑enabled development workflows and external systems such as databases, code search engines and deployment pipelines.
GitHub Copilot app modernization now is generally available via agentic AI tools for Java and .NET, Github said. For both platforms, the intentions are to help modernize applications and move them to the Azure cloud. In a blog post on September 23, GitHub said that developers using Copilot can access applications, apply code transformations, containerize services, and patch builds, all in days rather than months.
Microsoft and GitHub have made AI assistance a key part of their software development tools. Embedded in the latest Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code releases, GitHub Copilot puts a multifaceted pair programmer-combining AI-powered code completion, coding agents, and various Model Context Protocol servers-right inside your editor. The resulting tool kit is especially useful as part of a well-designed application development life cycle. Outside of good software engineering practices, however, it's easy to let vibe coding run away with itself, adding features that aren't needed and making code overly complex.
Code Optimizations is an AI-based service running on Azure Application Insights that uses telemetry gathered by the Application Insights Profiler for .NET to analyse runtime behaviour, find performance bottlenecks down to individual methods, and provide actionable suggestions. Developers can view aggregated data over time (defaulting to a rolling 24‑hour window, with history up to 30 days) for their production and non-production environments.
I've been for a while now filing issues in the GitHub Community feedback area when Copilot intrudes on my GitHub usage, I deeply resent that on top of Copilot seemingly training itself on my GitHub-posted code in violation of my licenses, GitHub wants me to look at (effectively) ads for this project I will never touch
"In the GitHub Copilot training program, they're learning how to be experts in GitHub Copilot itself," said Carrol Chang, Andela CEO, in an interview with The Register. "The reason we chose GitHub Copilot after having looked at a bunch of different code editing and code creation tools in the market is that GitHub Copilot is the clear winner across enterprise customers."
Those who pay for GitHub Copilot Pro, Pro+, Business, or Enterprise now have access to Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro model. The question is whether users will be enthusiastic about it. The reason: users can already access Gemini freely and in a larger variety of ways than GitHub Copilot allows for. Despite the fact that Gemini 2.5 Pro is Google's most powerful model, the general consensus seems to be that Claude Sonnet 4 performs faster, smarter, and more consistently when it comes to coding.
The update continues the extension's goal of making SQL development conversational, visual and local by improving Copilot Agent mode, adding colour-coded connections, streamlining local container workflows and polishing the Schema Designer.
Since GitHub Copilot launched as a preview in Summer 2021, we have seen an explosion of coding assistant products. Initially used as code completion on steroids, some products in this space (like Cursor and Windsurf) rapidly moved towards agentic interactions.
What started as a hedgehog-led love story is now a global community powerhouse, and these murals are its loudest statement yet. This transition illustrates how niche projects can evolve into significant movements.
