During Microsoft Build 2025, Microsoft announced that it is transforming Copilot into a fully-fledged AI agent. This agent can reason independently, make decisions, and write code.
According to CEO Satya Nadella (photo), this shift to vibe coding marks a fundamental change in software development. He spoke about building an open and scalable web of autonomous agents and compared the importance of this development to previous turning points in Microsoft’s history. Nadella referred to the introduction of 64-bit Windows, the move to the cloud, and the rise of mobile internet.
Microsoft acquired GitHub in 2018 and launched GitHub Copilot in 2021, together with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. Copilot is available in GitHub and in Microsoft’s open-source editor VS Code. Although the basic version is free, only Pro and Pro+ subscribers get full access to the chatbot’s more advanced features.
Last week, OpenAI released a new version of Codex, a cloud-based open-source platform for AI agents. These agents can perform multiple programming tasks simultaneously, significantly lightening the workload of large development teams.
Vibe coding has only recently become popular. However, AI has been playing a role in software development for much longer. In 2023, Emad Mostaque, former CEO of Stability AI, estimated that 41 percent of the code on GitHub was generated by AI. In 2024, a report from GitHub showed a 59 percent increase in contributions to generative AI projects. And a 98 percent increase in new projects. Another survey by Opsera found that more than 80 percent of developers had installed the GitHub Copilot extension. This points to widespread adoption of the technology.
During a demonstration on Monday, Nadella showed how Copilot automatically creates a task in GitHub within a secure environment. Once Copilot is done, the user receives a notification to check the result.
Specialized agents for developers
According to Nadella, Copilot can adapt to the tone and language used within a company. This helps make an organization’s knowledge more accessible to all employees. He also indicated that Microsoft is making Copilot’s underlying technology available to developers so they can build their own specialized agents.
Nadella stated that this core functionality will also be shared with partners so that they can contribute to an open and secure ecosystem of AI agents, for example for site reliability engineering, code reviews, or other applications.
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke emphasized that Copilot will continue to operate transparently and securely. While the agent is active, changes are recorded in a draft pull request so that developers can follow the process step by step via log files. According to Dohmke, existing security rules, such as branch security, remain fully in force.