Week One: Customize Your GitHub Copilot Experience [Copilot Skills Challenge] #184304
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This discussion and its comment have been edited and modified from its original format to enable evergreen learning
Welcome to the first part of the GitHub Copilot Skills Series! To begin, we’ll be focusing on how to set up custom instructions, prompts, and custom agents to make Copilot more effective for your specific use cases. Step One: Skills Exercise 💪First, you’ll complete Customize Your GitHub Copilot Experience skills exercise where you’ll customize GitHub Copilot's behavior with custom instructions, prompts, and custom agents for your specific development workflows. Then, come back for part two to deepen your learning and be entered to win a GitHub Shop Voucher! Step Two: Community Challenge 🧠Pick one (or more!) of the Copilot Personas below: In the comments of this discussion: Use the discussion below to share additional resources, ask questions for our team to answer, and respond to the challenge. Jump to the comments to view the answers. *No Purchase Necessary. Open only to Github community members 14+. Game ends February 17, 2026. For details, see Official rules. |
Replies: 34 comments 5 replies
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@queenofcorgis I post Step 2 in this discussion or in my repo in automatic issue? |
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@queenofcorgis - saw your comment about english only moderators -> perfect use case for an AI translator! |
name: The Explorer
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Is week 2 starting soon? I didn't see any updates from week 1 or 2 on links to the next phase. |
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Week one answers: Details1. The Bug Buster
2. The Rapid Prototyper
3. The Clean Coder
4. The Explorer
5. The Admin/Pro
Stay tuned for week two - starting TOMORROW! |
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Week Two has begun, explore Copilot Code Review in this week's challenge! |
✨ The Clean Code Sensei — Copilot Persona
🏛️ SOLID
🏋️ Object Calisthenics (9 Rules)
📏 Code Rules
🔴 Critical Code SmellsGod Class • Circular Dependency • Feature Envy • Long Method • Primitive Obsession ⚙️ Copilot Instructions |
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Persona: Bug Buster 🐞 My Copilot setup: Finding logical and edge-case bugs Writing clear and reliable code Adding helpful comments for complex logic Suggesting fixes instead of only pointing out issues Following best practices and avoiding duplicate code How this helps: |
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Customize Your GitHub Copilot Experience GitHub Copilot isn’t one-size-fits-all. You can tune it to match your language, workflow, and coding style. 1.Choose Where Copilot Helps You Copilot works best when you decide how much help you want. Inline suggestions → real-time code completions Tip: Use inline suggestions for speed and Copilot Chat for thinking. 2.Control Languages & File Types You can enable/disable Copilot per language. Examples:
Why? 3.Customize Copilot Chat Prompts Copilot listens to how you talk to it. Try prompts like
Be specific = better answers.
Guide Copilot using:
Example: // Validate email and return true or false Copilot will follow your structure and style automatically. 5.Use Copilot for Learning (Underrated ) Instead of Googling:
Perfect if you’re studying software engineering or sharpening skills. 6.Productivity Power Moves Copilot can:
Especially useful for: E-commerce apps 7.Keep Control (Very Important) Copilot is an assistant, not an authority. |
Persona: The Clean Coder
My Copilot setup: Clean, readable, and maintainable code Meaningful naming conventions Small, single-responsibility functions Refactoring suggestions over quick hacks Best practices (DRY, SOLID, simple patterns) How this helps my coding style: Instead of just “making it work,” Copilot helps me write code that’s easier to understand, review, test, and maintain over time. |
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Copilot Persona: Clean Coder I mainly use GitHub Copilot through clear, descriptive comments rather than default auto-completion. This helps me keep my code easy to understand and review, especially in React and backend projects, and encourages clean structure over quick but messy solutions. |
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From this Challenge, I learnt a lot, and had a great experience. |
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The Bug Buster |
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Asking my virtual coworker, how am i. You describe yourself as: The Clean Coder: Obsessed with readable, maintainable, and well-documented code. Do I see you that way too? Yes. From how we’ve been working on the chess-plan app, you come across as someone who cares about clarity and structure, not just “it works”:
So in practice you behave like a clean coder: you care about readability, maintainability, and consistent, well-structured behaviour. I’d describe you the same way you described yourself—and I’d add that you also care about the experience (layout, truncation, defaults, colors) in a way that fits that “clean” approach. |

























Week Two has begun, explore Copilot Code Review in this week's challenge!