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A practical guide to GitHub Copilot’s agentic coding agent, chat modes, and remote MCP server so you turn issues into tested PRs with clear steps (and no hype).
I got into software to ship ideas, not to chase down hard-coded strings after a late-breaking feature request. Unfortunately, many of our day-to-day tasks as developers involve branches working on boilerplate code, refactoring, and the “pre-work” to get to the fun stuff: shipping new features.
So I turned to Copilot’s agentic workflows to help speed along some of that grunt work. In my latest Rubber Duck Thursdays live stream, I put that theory to the test in a project where I wanted to localize an application that used:
By the end of my stream, that idea became a GitHub issue, which turned into a fully tested, review-ready PR while I fielded chat questions, and learned about the preview custom chat mode features in VS Code.
Let’s dive in.
Even seasoned developers and teams still burn hours on jobs like:
Copilot’s ability to create issues, along with its coding agent, custom chat modes in VS Code, and the new remote MCP backend fold those chores into one tight loop—issue to PR—while you stay firmly in the driver’s seat. You still review, tweak, and decide when to merge, but you skip the drudgery.
| Capability | What it does | Why it matters | How to enable and use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding agent | Turns any GitHub Issue you assign to Copilot into a PR, and works on that task asynchronously. | Allows you to offload the boilerplate work while you focus on reviews and edge case logic. | Learn how to enable Copilot coding agent. |
| Create issues with Copilot | Converts a natural-language prompt into a well-structured Issue with title, body, acceptance criteria, and file hints. | Saves PM/eng refining and sets team members, or Copilot coding agent, up with the context they need to work effectively. | Navigate to github.com/copilot and write a prompt to create an issue. Learn more about using Copilot to create issues. |
| Custom chat modes (in preview in VS Code) | Lets you script repeatable AI workflows (e.g., Planning, Refactor, Test-Writer) that appear alongside the default Ask / Edit / Agent chat modes. | Allows you to package instructions and relevant tools for easier use, helping your team follow similar conventions. | Add a .chatmode.md file to your repo; available in preview in VS Code release 1.101. Learn more about custom chat modes in VS Code. |
| Remote GitHub MCP Server | Allows AI tools to access live GitHub context and tools, like issues, pull requests and code files. With the remote GitHub MCP server, you don’t need to install it locally, and can even authenticate with OAuth 2.0. | Provides a smooth experience to accessing the GitHub MCP server, reducing the management overhead of a local server. | Update your MCP configuration with the example shown in the remote GitHub MCP Server documentation. |
| Copilot agent mode | Copilot agent mode is a real‑time collaborator that sits in your editor, works with you, and edits files based on your needs. Unlike the coding agent, Copilot agent mode works synchronously with you. | Think of agent mode as the senior dev pair programming with you. It has access to several tools (like reading/writing code, running commands in the terminal, executing tools on MCP servers), and works alongside you. | Copilot agent mode is available in several IDEs including VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains (public preview), Eclipse (public preview) and Xcode (public preview). |
Here’s the exact flow I demoed on the most recent Rubber Duck Thursdays stream.
Go to the immersive view of Copilot Chat. At the bottom of the page, in the “Ask Copilot” box, describe what you want. For example, below is the prompt that I used.
Copilot drafts that into an issue, which includes a title, acceptance criteria, and a loose action plan. From there, you can assign that issue to Copilot, and let it cook in the background.
Shortly after assignment, the coding agent:
While that runs, you can keep coding, use it as an opportunity to learn (like we learned about custom chat modes) or grab a coffee.
Whether it’s a colleague, collaborator, or Copilot writing the code, you still need a reviewer. So it’s important to make sure you look the code over carefully, just like you would any other pull request.
However, there’s always a possibility that you encounter failures, or spot some changes in your manual testing. For example, I spotted some hard-coded strings that the agent hadn’t addressed. Once again, we approach this just like we would any other pull request. We can post our feedback in a comment. For example, here’s the comment I used:
That’s a great start. However, there are a lot of pages which are hardcoded in English still. For example, the flight search/bookings page, the check reservation page. Can you implement the localization on those pages, please?
Copilot will react to the comment once again, and get to work in another session.
If you’re using VS Code as your daily driver with GitHub Copilot, then you’re probably used to the ask, edit and agent chat modes. But in the VS Code 1.101 release, the team has added custom chat modes in preview. This allows you to package instructions and relevant tools for easier use. For example, I built upon the VS Code team’s “Plan” chat mode example:
.chatmode.md. This is where you can configure the instructions, and the available tools for your new custom chat mode.Below is the example that we used in the livestream, slightly modified from the VS Code team’s docs example. We’ve added the create_issue tool to the list of allowed tools, adjusted our expectations of what’s included in the issue and added an instruction about creating the issue with the `create_issue` tool once revisions are complete and approved by the user.
When the file is available in your teammate’s local repositories (so they’ve pulled the changes locally), VS Code surfaces the mode in the chat dropdown, allowing you to configure chat modes that are consistent and convenient across your team.
You may be used to running MCP locally through npm packages or as docker containers. However, remote MCP servers allow you to reduce the management overhead of running these tools locally. There may be other benefits too. For example, the remote GitHub MCP Servers allows you to authenticate using OAuth 2.0 instead of Personal Access Tokens.
To use the GitHub Remote MCP Server in VS Code, you’ll need to update the MCP configuration. You can find the instructions on how to do that in the GitHub MCP Server repository.
| 💡 Note: Did you know that the GitHub MCP Server is open source? Take a look through the codebase or raise an issue. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even end up becoming a contributor! |
While we didn’t show it in depth, I quickly walked through one of my previous agent mode sessions in Xcode. It showed how I gave a similar prompt to Copilot, asking to add internationalization to the app, which we were able to see in the main navigation bar of the app running in the simulator.
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don’t |
|---|---|
| Keep issues tightly scoped | Ask the agent to “re-architect the app” |
| Provide acceptance criteria | Assume the agent knows your intent |
| Carefully review the changes made | Execute code or merge a PR without a review |
| Iterate with Copilot. How often do you get something right on the first shot? | Expect perfection first time |
@github with what you’ve been working on!Agentic workflows within GitHub Copilot aren’t magic; they’re tools. When a single click can help reduce technical debt (or knock out any other repetitive task you dread), why not let Copilot handle the boilerplate while you tackle the more challenging, fun, and creative problems?