Track: Developer Productivity¶
Target Audience: Developers using Copilot in daily work Duration: 27 hours (9 sessions × 3 hrs) Difficulty: Beginner → Intermediate Recommended Delivery: 3 to 4 days (2 to 3 sessions per day)
Description¶
Use this track to practice Copilot during daily development. Work with suggestions, Chat, prompts, the CLI, and agent mode, then add shared context and code review.
In Session M2-05, you critique a plan and implement the change in an isolated app session. In Session M7-05's developer route, you supervise child sessions that review local code and a synthetic PR snapshot.
Prerequisites¶
- Working knowledge of at least one programming language
- GitHub account with Copilot access
- VS Code installed with GitHub Copilot extension
- Basic Git proficiency
- Familiarity with pull request workflows
- Copilot CLI access, including
/plan,/fleet,/review, and/security-review - Copilot app access with
/rubber-duckand/orchestrate - Node.js 22 or later and CLI
/refinebefore Session M1-03 - App
/fork,/merge-to-parent, and/sparfor Session M2-05 - Local sandbox support and checks on how the installed CLI version applies limits for Session M2-01
- Python 3.10 or later for Sessions M2-05 and M7-05
Sessions¶
| Order | Session ID | Title | Difficulty | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | M1-01 | Introduction to GitHub Copilot | Beginner | 3 hrs |
| 2 | M1-02 | Copilot Chat & Inline Suggestions | Beginner | 3 hrs |
| 3 | M1-03 | Prompt Engineering Fundamentals | Beginner | 3 hrs |
| 4 | M2-01 | GitHub Copilot in the CLI | Intermediate | 3 hrs |
| 5 | M2-02 | Agent Mode in the IDE | Intermediate | 3 hrs |
| 6 | M2-03 | Copilot Spaces & Context Management | Intermediate | 3 hrs |
| 7 | M2-04 | Copilot for Code Review & Pull Requests | Intermediate | 3 hrs |
| 8 | M2-05 | GitHub Copilot App for Developers | Intermediate | 3 hrs |
| 9 | M7-05 | Orchestrate Agents and Workstreams: developer route | Intermediate | 3 hrs |
App access is required for Sessions M2-05 and M7-05. Stop those labs if access or a required command is unavailable. Prepared outputs support trainer explanation only. The Session M7-05 developer route does not require Sessions M7-01 to M7-04 or MCP.
Recommended delivery schedule¶
3-day standard¶
| Day | Sessions | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Sessions M1-01, M1-02, M1-03 | Foundations: setup, Chat, prompting |
| Day 2 | Sessions M2-01, M2-02, M2-03 | CLI, agent mode, and context |
| Day 3 | Sessions M2-04, M2-05, M7-05 | Code review, app workflow, and orchestration |
Each day has nine teaching hours before breaks. Prefer the four-day schedule.
4-day relaxed¶
| Day | Sessions | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Sessions M1-01, M1-02 | Setup and Chat workflows |
| Day 2 | Sessions M1-03, M2-01 | Prompting + CLI |
| Day 3 | Sessions M2-02, M2-03 | Agent mode + context |
| Day 4 | Sessions M2-04, M2-05, M7-05 | Code review, app workflow, and developer orchestration |
Learning outcomes¶
After this track, you should be able to:
- Use inline suggestions, Chat, CLI, and agent mode in daily work
- Write effective prompts and choose the context each task needs
- Configure Copilot Spaces and custom instructions for team workflows
- Use Copilot for PR summaries, code review, and merge conflict resolution
- Combine Copilot tools in a daily development workflow
- Choose the right Copilot tool for a task
- Set up project-level and personal context to guide Copilot's output
- Use isolated Copilot App sessions for implementation and independent critique
- Revise a plan before implementation and assess local code and security findings
- Direct read-only child sessions and distinguish local success from PR readiness
- Inspect loaded instructions, manage queued and background work, and check recovery state
Next steps¶
- Agentic Development. Move into Copilot App canvases, autonomous agents, MCP servers, and custom agents
- DevOps & Automation. Apply Copilot to CI/CD pipelines, GitHub Actions, and Infrastructure as Code