Getting started

Getting a working Copilot setup in VS Code takes minutes, and most of what makes the agent useful shows up later, in how you steer it. This chapter covers the part that has to come first: install and sign in, learn the two very different surfaces Copilot works through, and use one of them to ship a small change end to end - described, reviewed as a diff, verified, committed. By the end, the tool is running and you have run the review loop that every later chapter builds on.

The example grows: this chapter works in one inherited repo, and a second - the shared library other services import - joins in the modes chapter.

The chapter is written for an engineer who already lives in VS Code and is eyeing the agent side of Copilot with reasonable suspicion. You do not have to give up the editor you know; the agent works inside it. Prerequisites and environment options live on the course overview; nothing here assumes prior Copilot experience.

The first task

The chapters use one small running example: you have inherited an order-management API, orders-service, lightly documented and built by people who have moved on. It has a visible, low-stakes bug that makes a good first task: the “recent orders” endpoint returns its list oldest-first when the UI clearly expects newest-first. The bug is small, real, and verifiable against output you can read yourself - the right shape for a first change on a repo you do not fully trust yet. Any repo you own with a comparable small bug substitutes fine; if you have none handy, introduce a small known bug on a scratch branch and fix that.

Three moves, one per lesson:

• Set it up - install the Copilot extension in VS Code, sign in, and confirm it is reading your workspace - Setup · install & sign in
• Learn the two surfaces - inline completions (the grey ghost text) and the Chat view are different surfaces for different moments - Two surfaces · completions vs chat
• Ship the fix - hand the ordering bug to the chat, read the diff before accepting it, verify, and commit - First change · a small reviewed edit

None of it is hard. What makes it worth doing as one continuous task is the habit it installs: read the diff before you accept it. Copilot gets faster and more autonomous as this course goes on, but the review never goes away. On code you did not write, that habit is not optional polish; it is the whole game.