GitHub Copilot Hackathon

Learning goals

• Use the right built-in mode: Know when to reach for Ask (sparring partner), Plan (review before execution), or Agent (direct execution), and why the distinction matters
• Blueprint before building: Use AI to produce BLUEPRINT.md and developer_todo.md before writing a single line of implementation code
• Author specialist agents: Create focused agents with clearly defined responsibilities, minimal tool sets, and explicit domain boundaries
• Replace guesswork with skills: Build reusable skills that give agents deterministic capabilities — consistent backlog item structure, correct test execution, reliable project state
• Implement end-to-end with TDD: Drive one backlog item from data layer through to a tested UI component using the strict test-first loop

Exercises

Learn the basic features

• If you have not used GitHub Copilot much you can start with this repository.
  • Select only one language, more instructions in the exercises folder
  • Agent mode can help to install the missing parts of your development environment
  • Try inline Copilot, chat, agent-mode

Try and learn more advanced features

• Guided exercises for testing Copilot instruction files, prompt files, and MCP
  • https://github.com/EficodeDemoOrg/copilot-advanced-exercises
• Exercises for agents, hooks, and skills. Select based on the language, the exercise is same in all repositories.
  • https://github.com/EficodeDemoOrg/copilot-advanced-go
  • https://github.com/EficodeDemoOrg/copilot-jsts-advanced
  • https://github.com/EficodeDemoOrg/copilot-advanced-python

Useful Links

• Prompting guide
• Awesome Copilot
• GitHub list of MCP
• GitHub Copilot plans and their features
• Atlassian MCP Server repository
• Atlassian getting started with MCP
• Spark https://github.com/spark (needs GitHub Copilot Enterprise license)
• Speckit https://github.com/github/spec-kit