Learn the GitHub Copilot app

A hands‑on, self‑paced walkthrough for getting real experience with the GitHub Copilot app — the agent‑driven desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux that went GA on June 17, 2026.

The GitHub Copilot app is a desktop home for agent‑driven development. Start sessions from an issue, PR, or prompt; run parallel agent sessions across repos, each on its own branch and worktree; review the diff, validate in the integrated terminal and browser, and open a pull request that uses your team's existing checks — all without context‑switching.

Clone this repo, open it in the app, and work through the modules at your own pace. You get a real, runnable codebase to drive the agent against and a step‑by‑step path from your first quick chat to shipping a reviewed pull request.

---

Who this is for

• You: a developer comfortable with Git, a terminal, and a typical web stack.
• Time: about an hour end to end, or pick individual modules.
• What you'll be able to do: install the app, run sessions in the three modes, review and ship a PR, run sessions in parallel, and know where the advanced features (canvases, automations, MCP/BYOK, sandboxes) live.

What's in here

Path	What it is
docs/walkthrough.md	Start here — the suggested path through the modules
docs/00-prerequisites.md	Install + sign‑in checklist to do first
docs/01-quick-chat.md	Module 1 — Quick chats
docs/02-first-session.md	Module 2 — Your first agent session (modes)
docs/03-review-and-pr.md	Module 3 — Review the diff, verify, open a PR
docs/04-parallel-sessions.md	Module 4 — Parallel sessions & worktrees
docs/05-modes-and-models.md	Module 5 — Modes, models & reasoning effort
docs/06-advanced.md	Module 6 — Canvases, automations, MCP/BYOK, sandboxes, /chronicle
docs/cheatsheet.md	One‑page reference to keep open while you work
exercises/	Ready‑made tasks + seed issues + solutions
sample-app/	A tiny Express + TypeScript Task API to drive the agent against

The sample app

sample-app/ is a tiny Express + TypeScript Task API with a passing Vitest + Supertest suite. It is deliberately small and has a few intentional gaps so the agent has real work to do as you follow along:

1. POST /tasks has no input validation.
2. There is no DELETE /tasks/:id endpoint (and TaskStore.remove() is missing).
3. setCompleted has a subtle bug — it never refreshes updatedAt.
4. GET /tasks has no ?completed= filter.

Each gap maps to an exercise in exercises/ and a seed issue you can create with one command. main ships green so CI is happy out of the box.

cd sample-app
npm install
npm test      # 8 passing tests
npm run dev   # http://localhost:3000  (GET /health, /tasks)

How to follow along

1. Set up first: work through docs/00-prerequisites.md so the app is installed, signed in, and this repo is connected.
2. Fork or clone this repo so you have your own issues and PRs to work with. Optionally create the practice issues in one shot — see exercises/seed-issues.md.
3. Work through docs/walkthrough.md module by module.
4. Keep docs/cheatsheet.md open as a quick reference while you work.

License & contributing

MIT — see LICENSE. Contributions welcome; see CONTRIBUTING.md and our CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.

This is a community learning resource and is not an official GitHub product. Product behavior and UI evolve quickly — always cross‑check against the official docs.