GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered coding assistant that integrates across the software development lifecycle, from inline code suggestions in the editor to agent-based automation and command-line assistance. It provides contextualized help throughout development workflows, enabling developers to write, review, and ship code more efficiently. The tool is natively built into GitHub and available as an extension across leading editors including Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Neovim, Xcode, Eclipse, and Zed.

Copilot operates across multiple surfaces — in the IDE, on GitHub.com, in the terminal via GitHub CLI, and on mobile — giving teams flexibility in how and where they interact with AI assistance. Developers can use agent mode to autonomously handle tasks such as writing code, creating pull requests, and responding to feedback. Third-party agents from providers including Anthropic and OpenAI can also be assigned to issues directly alongside Copilot.

Organizations can customize Copilot through policy controls, audit logs, MCP server integrations, and shared knowledge spaces via Copilot Spaces. Enterprise-grade features include SAML SSO, organization-wide governance, and the ability to manage which models and agents developers can access. GitHub Copilot Enterprise additionally supports codebase indexing for deeper contextual suggestions tailored to a company's own repositories.

The platform supports multiple leading AI models from providers including Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI, allowing users to choose models optimized for speed, accuracy, or cost depending on their workflow needs. According to the site, developers using GitHub Copilot report up to 75% higher job satisfaction and are up to 55% more productive at writing code.