GitHub Skills: Getting Started with GitHub Copilot

What it is

GitHub Skills exercises are short courses that run inside a GitHub repository: you start the exercise, and a bot guides you step by step through issues and comments as you complete each task. Getting Started with GitHub Copilot is the official introduction to Copilot in this format.

What you do

You work on a small fictional high school activities website and use Copilot to change it. Along the way you:

• Use a preconfigured Codespace, which runs VS Code in your browser, so nothing needs installing locally.
• Try the different ways of working with Copilot: explaining code, writing it, planning changes and developing a feature.
• Use Copilot to summarise and review a pull request.

Prerequisites

GitHub suggests completing the Introduction to GitHub exercise first, being familiar with VS Code and having basic coding knowledge. You need a GitHub account with Copilot access; Copilot Free works for getting started.

Is it worth your time?

Yes, as a first hands-on hour. Reading about Copilot is less useful than feeling the difference between accepting a suggestion, asking chat to explain something and letting an agent make a change. The exercise gives you all three in a safe, throwaway project, and it finishes with pull request review, a habit worth building from day one.

It is deliberately short, so it will not teach judgment: when to trust a suggestion, how to review a diff properly or how to test AI output. That is what the Sefism roadmap adds afterwards.

What you can do after it

• Accept, reject and partially accept inline suggestions.
• Ask Copilot Chat to explain unfamiliar code.
• Use Copilot to make a small multi-step change.
• Ask Copilot to summarise and review a pull request.

How it fits the Coding with AI tools roadmap

The Copilot edition of the Sefism roadmap uses this exercise in the setup stage, as your first real session, and again in the final stage, where you review your own project's pull requests.

Common questions

Does the Codespace cost money? GitHub gives personal accounts a monthly allowance of free Codespaces usage; a short exercise like this normally fits inside it. Stop the Codespace when you finish.

Can I do it in my own editor? The exercise is designed for the Codespace; once finished, repeat the same steps in your local VS Code on a project of your own.