GitHub Copilot Archives

💻 1. GitHub Copilot (Workspaces Edition)

GitHub Copilot has evolved from an autocomplete helper to a full-fledged workspace assistant. Using OpenAI’s Codex model, Copilot can now suggest entire files, scaffold feature branches, and automate boilerplate creation.

Best for: Rapid prototyping, code review, writing tests

Integrations: Visual Studio Code, JetBrains, GitHub PRs

New in 2025: Goal-driven workspace sessions, where devs describe a task and Copilot sets up an environment to complete it

🧠 2. Raycast AI

Raycast isn’t just a launcher anymore — it’s an AI command center. Developers use Raycast AI to control local workflows, launch builds, run Git commands, or even spin up test environments using natural language.

Boosts productivity by reducing context switching

Integrates with Notion, GitHub, Linear, and more

Now supports AI plugin scripting with GPT-style completions

🔁 3. Docker + Dagger

Docker continues to dominate local development environments, but the real game-changer in 2025 is Dagger — a programmable CI/CD engine that uses containers as portable pipelines.

Write CI/CD flows in familiar languages like Go or Python

Locally reproduce builds or tests before pushing to CI

Combines reproducibility with transparency

🧪 4. Postman Flows & API Builder

Postman is now a full API design suite, not just for testing. The new Flows feature lets you visually orchestrate chained API calls with logic gates and branching responses.

Build and debug full workflows using a no-code interface

Collaborate with backend + frontend teams in real time

Great for mocking services and building auto-test sequences

🔐 5. 1Password Developer Tools

Security is part of productivity. 1Password’s Developer Kit in 2025 allows for automatic credential injection into local builds and CI environments without ever exposing sensitive data.

Secrets management built for code, not dashboards

CLI-first, supports GitHub Actions, GitLab, and Jenkins

Supports machine identities and time-limited tokens

🧩 Choosing the Right Tools

Tool fatigue is real. Instead of adding everything at once, consider doing a monthly tool audit. Replace clunky, outdated, or manual tools with smarter, integrated solutions that scale with your workflow.

Whether you’re working solo, in a startup, or a large engineering org, the tools above can drastically reduce friction, boost output, and help developers spend more time writing meaningful code.

Updated: May 2025

Microsoft Build 2025 placed one clear bet: the future of development is deeply collaborative, AI-assisted, and platform-agnostic. From personal AI agents to next-gen coding copilots, the announcements reflect a broader shift in how developers write, debug, deploy, and collaborate.

This post breaks down the most important tools and platforms announced at Build 2025 — with a focus on how they impact day-to-day development, especially for app, game, and tool engineers building for modern ecosystems.

🤖 AI Agents: Personal Developer Assistants

Microsoft introduced customizable AI Agents that run in Windows, Visual Studio, and the cloud. These agents can proactively assist developers by:

Understanding codebases and surfacing related documentation
Running tests and debugging background services
Answering domain-specific questions across projects

Each agent is powered by Azure AI Studio and built using Semantic Kernel, Microsoft’s open-source orchestration framework. You can use natural language to customize your agent’s workflow, or integrate it into existing CI/CD pipelines.

💻 GitHub Copilot Workspaces (GA Release)

GitHub Copilot Workspaces — first previewed in late 2024 — is now generally available. These are AI-powered, goal-driven environments where developers describe a task and Copilot sets up the context, imports dependencies, generates code suggestions, and proposes test cases.

Real-World Use Cases:

Quickly scaffold new Unity components from scratch
Build REST APIs in ASP.NET with built-in auth and logging
Generate test cases from Jira ticket descriptions

GitHub Copilot has also added deeper **VS Code** and **JetBrains** IDE integrations, enabling inline suggestions, pull request reviews, and even agent-led refactoring.

📦 Azure AI Studio: Fine-Tuned Models + Agents

Azure AI Studio is now the home for building, managing, and deploying AI agents across Microsoft’s ecosystem. With simple UI + YAML-based pipelines, developers can:

Train on private datasets
Orchestrate multi-agent workflows
Deploy to Microsoft Teams, Edge, Outlook, and web apps

The Studio supports OpenAI’s GPT-4-Turbo and Gemini-compatible models out of the box, and now offers telemetry insights like latency breakdowns, fallback triggers, and per-token cost estimates.

🪟 Windows AI Foundry

Microsoft unveiled the Windows AI Foundry, a local runtime engine designed for inference on edge devices. This allows developers to deploy quantized models directly into UWP apps or as background AI services that work without internet access.

Supports:

ONNX and custom ML models (including Whisper + LLama 3)
Real-time summarization and captioning
Offline voice-to-command systems for games and AR/VR apps

⚙️ IntelliCode and Dev Home Upgrades

Visual Studio IntelliCode now includes AI-driven performance suggestions, real-time code comparison with OSS benchmarks, and environment-aware linting based on project telemetry. Meanwhile, Dev Home for Windows 11 has received an upgrade with:

Live terminal previews of builds and pipelines
Integrated dashboards for GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps
Chat-based shell commands using AI assistants

Game devs can even monitor asset import progress, shader compilation, or CI test runs in real-time from a unified Dev Home UI.

🧪 What Should You Try First?

Set up a GitHub Copilot Workspace for your next module or script
Spin up an AI agent in Azure AI Studio with domain-specific docs
Download Windows AI Foundry and test on-device summarization
Install Semantic Kernel locally to test prompt chaining

Top Developer Productivity Tools in 2025