Discussion

What is Copilot exactly?

didibus: > "Actually, I made a mistake. I meant Cursor."ROFL

operatingthetan: > CursorMight as well be Copilot at this point with how CLIs have been adopted.

collabs: It feels like a long time ago but around late 2022 or early 2023 ish, I used Copilot very extensively. I thought it was a superpower.I even went in and edited the text area size iirc from 8k to 32k or something just so I could paste longer context into it.I really felt like an elite haxor.However, times have changed. What was "state of the art" in 2023 is pedestrian now. Copilot really had an early lead, in my opinion when Bard felt somewhat off. Now? I don't even think about Copilot. I feel very comfortable putting my thoughts in Claude or even Gemini.

sidrag22: Title is fantastic, had me laughing at my own ignorance to copilot's offerings before I even started the article.I do feel like if any of the major companies could do with a rebranding it would be copilot. They are tossing that name on all of their stuff, and it just doesn't carry the weight of any of the big names even though its chatgpt models under the hood. Personally i associate it with annoying bloatware, and silently judge windows users based on if that icon is still on their tasbar.

CactusBlue: It feels like the Microsoft version of "IBM Watson", where they renamed seemingly unrelated projects to Watson.

dboreham: ActiveX

genidoi: > So I asked him. "What is your developer workflow using Copilot?" I was not prepared for the answer he gave me:I don’t know why I get annoyed when LLM’s and their output are casually referred to as “he/she”, particularly by non-techies, but I do. There’s something about personifying an LLM that seems incorrect. Perhaps it’s a fear being stoked that increasingly, people might actually be thinking of LLM’s as living beings.

laszlokorte: Isn't the line you quoted about asking a real person co-worker?

genidoi: Oh it is yeah.

daemonologist: I'm pretty sure they're referring to their coworker as "he," not an LLM.

tptacek: This is weird to me because I don't think I talk to anyone regularly who even uses Cursor anymore, let alone Copilot. It's Claude and Codex now, and then people with more interesting/oddball TUI agents or async web agents.

cmrdporcupine: Many people working the front-end space seem to really like Cursor. It seems to have a dedicated audience. Myself, I have never liked VS Code so I don't have a pull towards it.I think the costing there is the problem and with (GitHub) Copilot. Not owning their own model and not able to take advantage of the (probably brutally subsidized) fixed monthly packages that have relatively generous limits means Cursor and Copilot can't compete cost wise on a per-token basis.

lordleft: I genuinely don't understand how one company can be so bad at naming products for multiple decades. It makes Sony's names for its headphones seem downright catchy.

Configure0251: We had a good laugh when our IT informed us that Remote Desktop was being renamed Windows App. I really wonder what is going on over there because from where I'm sitting it makes no effin' sense at all.

minnzen: The gap between "AI autocomplete" and "AI agent with tool use" keeps widening. Copilot is still in the first camp.

alkonaut: Copilot cli isn’t as good as Claude but it’s not just fancy autocomplete either. Copilot cli seems to be converging with the rest and you can use mcp servers, skills, launch fleets of agents that use tools etc.

danbrooks: Amazing ending. I have been told "no one should be using copilot" - and I agree!

phainopepla2: I use Github Copilot because it's what my job provides to me. But 95% of my usage is via OpenCode (which is officially supported [0]), not copilot-cli or their IDE plugins. The rest is autocomplete in the IDE.I actually find it to be a great deal, especially because they charge by request rather than token. So if you provide detailed prompts a lot of work can get done for very little cost.[0] https://github.blog/changelog/2026-01-16-github-copilot-now-...

oblio: Nah. DotNet.

rdtsc: They should just go with the full aviation crew naming scheme. Rename some of them to FO (first officer), second officer, navigator, flight engineer, radio operator. The cheaper models for quick answers will be the "relief crew". Data filtering and loading would be "loadmaster". Instead of referring to the user as "user" call them "captain". Who doesn't like to feel important and in charge!? Embrace the ridiculousness, at least they will all have some distinctive labels to go by.

skywhopper: Which component is the bombardier?

DemiGuru: That’s Finance. They don't fly the plane; they just wait for the right moment to drop the bill for those premium tokens.

sumtechguy: MS has done this for years. The have had several overall brands. Visual, live, .net, direct, Active, X, etc etc etc. They will even sometimes have a couple in flight at the same time. Right now now it seems to be copilot and m365. I probably even forgot a couple.

HeyLaughingBoy: I use Copilot pretty much exclusively because it's our "approved AI solution" at the office and they block access to Claude. Since I'm so used to Copilot at work, I just end up using it all the time.

dfxm12: It does a good job of when a VIP employee demands "copilot", you have to buy a bunch of different licenses for them because no one knows exactly what they want (they just want copilot, no not that one).

illwrks: I’ve been saying the same thing to people I work with for the past few months. When everything is labelled as copilot it creates such confused ideas when someone says they have created something with copilot… or created a copilot agent. It always invoked 20 questions to interrogate what actually was created, and with what ‘version’ of copilot.MS really needs to distinguish between them all.

workfromspace: Here's ChatGPT's list of product names with "Copilot" (aka FrustationPilot):https://chatgpt.com/share/69cd6af5-f74c-8388-971e-d4b85ce04d...Copilot AgentsCopilot AnalyticsCopilot ChatCopilot CoworkCopilot for Finance (later renamed to “Finance Agents”)Copilot GPT BuilderCopilot in BingCopilot in Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel...)Copilot in Microsoft EdgeCopilot LabsCopilot PluginsCopilot SearchCopilot StudioGitHub CopilotMicrosoft 365 CopilotMicrosoft 365 Copilot ChatMicrosoft CopilotMicrosoft Copilot ProMicrosoft Security CopilotSales CopilotService CopilotWindows Copilot

ValentineC: > I use Github Copilot because it's what my job provides to me. But 95% of my usage is via OpenCode (which is officially supported [0]), not copilot-cli or their IDE plugins.Does the bug where premium requests get consumed for spinning up subagents still exist?https://www.reddit.com/r/opencodeCLI/comments/1qttkzs/increa...I've stuck to Visual Studio Code's Copilot integration because of this, because I'm on a tight budget and didn't fancy burning through my premium requests.

gwerbin: This is the most Microsoft thing ever.And shows up even when you are trying to use one specific Copilot. I want to try Copilot CLI, but it only seems half documented. A lot of things point back to Copilot in VS Code (or Jetbrains and Eclipse).

bigbuppo: I too love Copilot 365 OneDrive Fabric for Business E5 powered by Yammer P2.

outside2344: ... Enterprise Edition