Microsoft Open Sources GitHub Copilot in VS Code

On the opening day of its Build 2025 conference, Microsoft announced that GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code is now open source, allowing developers to freely access, modify, and build on its code.

The AI-powered Copilot extensions will now be part of the official Visual Studio Code open-source repository, a move Microsoft says reinforces its commitment to transparency and community-driven innovation.

In the coming weeks, the company plans to open-source the code for the GitHub Copilot Chat extension and integrate its AI features directly into the core of Visual Studio Code. Additionally, it will open-source its prompt testing infrastructure, enabling community pull requests to be built and tested more effectively.

According to the company, GitHub Copilot is being open-sourced to boost transparency, security, and collaboration. With improved large language models and widely adopted AI UX patterns, the need for closed “secret sauce” strategies has diminished.

Open sourcing also empowers extension developers to build and test more effectively, while addressing concerns around data collection and enabling faster community-driven security fixes.

At the event, GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, introduced a new Copilot coding agent designed to autonomously handle specific programming tasks, notify developers when complete, and integrate its work directly into existing codebases.

The AI-powered agent can add features, fix bugs, refactor code, enhance documentation, and extend tests—particularly in well-tested codebases.