GitHub has announced several improvements for developers at Universe, its annual conference. Developers will get multi-model Copilot and GitHub Spark, an AI-native tool for building applications in natural language.

GItHub Universe is currently underway in San Francisco and, as expected, many of the improvements being announced are  AI features aimed at letting developers building applications more quickly, securely, and efficiently. 

Top billing went to the announcement that Copilot is going to be multi-model, meaning developers will be able to select from models including Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro, and OpenAI's GPT-4o, o1-preview and o1-mini. GitHub says the multi-model choices will be available in areas from Copilot Workspace to multi-file editing to code review, security autofix, and the CLI:

"Whether it’s in VS Code or on GitHub.com, individual developers can now decide which models work best for them, while organizations and enterprises have full control over which models they enable for their team."

Developers can toggle between models during a conversation with Copilot Chat to choose the right model, or continue to let Copilot use its default. Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet will be available via GitHub Copilot starting now, and Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro will be available in the coming weeks.

Another improvement announced at the conference is substantial updates to GitHub Copilot in VS Code, Copilot Workspace, GitHub Models, and Copilot Autofix. Developers working in VS Code can now use Copilot Chat to make edits across multiple files at the same time based on natural language prompts.

GitHub Copilot Extensions have been extended to all users.  Copilot Extensions allow developers to ask questions of any integrated developer tools including services like Atlassian Rovo, Docker and Sentry. For example, Stack Overflow's new GitHub Copilot Extension allows developers to get a summarized response from the 16-years worth of technical knowledge contributed to its platform. DataStax has expanded its extension to make it easier for developers to directly interact with DataStax Langflow and its Astra DB databases’ vector, tabular, and streaming data. Users will also be able to build their own private extensions that work with their internal developer tooling.

There's a new public preview of GitHub Copilot for Xcode for developers building apps across Apple platforms, and more generally a new code review capability that offers fast feedback on code in 30 seconds. Users can request a review from Copilot in Visual Studio Code, or on GitHub.com when they create a pull request.

Finally, users can now specify custom instructions to personalize Copilot Chat responses in VS Code and Visual Studio based on their preferred tools, organizational knowledge, and coding conventions. Additional context from developer's repositories, pull requests, issues, discussions, and the web via Bing integration can also be used for the personalization.

Conference delegates were also introduced to GitHub Spark, a tool for building and sharing personalized micro apps (“sparks”). Spark is powered by natural language, and is aimed at hobbyists rather than professional developers. GitHub says Spark is about fun and personal software. It offers live history, previews, and the ability to edit code directly. The ideal Spark application is one that would otherwise not be created because it seems too short-lived, niche, or time-consuming to prioritize. GitHub says our devices aren't nearly as personalized as they could be because the complexity of creating bespoke apps is too high.

GitHub Spark is an AI-powered tool for creating and sharing micro apps ("sparks"), which can be tailored to your exact needs and preferences, and are directly usable from your desktop and mobile devices without needing to write or deploy any code. It has three tightly-integrated components: a natural language-based editor for describing your ideas; a managed runtime environment, which hosts your sparks, and provides them access to data storage, theming, and LLMs; and a progressive web apps-enabled dashboard, which lets you manage and launch your sparks from anywhere.

Spark is available now in preview, and multi-model Copilot is available now.

More Information

GitHub Spark

Copilot Multi-model documentation

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