Comment by CharlieDigital

    > The value-add that Microsoft brings to Github Copilot is near zero

You are not their target audience.

The value add is the GitHub integration. By far the best.

GH has cloud agents that can be kicked off from VS Code; deeply integrated with GH and very easy to set up. You can apply enterprise policies on model access, MCP white lists, model behavior, etc. from GitHub enterprise and layered down to org and repo (multiple layers of controls for enterprises and teams). It aggregates and collects metrics across the org.

It also has tight integration with Codespaces which is pretty damn amazing. `gh codespace code` and it's an entire standalone full-stack that runs our entire app on a unique URL and GH credentials flow through into the Codespace so everything "just works". Basically full preview environments for the full application at a unique URL conveniently integrated into GH. But also a better alternative to git worktrees. This is a pretty killer runtime environment for agents because you can fully preview and work on multiple streams at once in totally isolated environments.

If you are a solo engineer, none of this is relevant and probably doesn't make sense (except Codespaces, which is pretty sweet in any case), but for orgs using the GH stack is a huge, huge value add because Microsoft is going to have a better understanding of enterprise controls.

If you want to understand the value add of Copilot, I think you need to spend a bit of time digging into the enterprise account featureset in GH, try Codespaces, try Copilot cloud agents. Then it clicks.