GitHub Universe 2026: Copilot moves to background agents, automations and agent merge
Geektime reviews GitHub's announcements at Universe 2026, most of which move Copilot from an assistant that answers prompts in the editor to a system of agents that work in the background. A session started on github.com, the CLI, VS Code, or Slack and Teams can continue in another interface, and by default runs in a cloud sandbox on GitHub's infrastructure. The Copilot app gets two public preview features: Projects, which runs several agents around one goal, and Computer Use, which works with desktop apps on macOS and Windows after the user approves. Copilot Automations take a task, a trigger and a set of allowed tools. They can now fire on events from Jira, Sentry and PagerDuty through the REST API, there are 24 new triggers inside GitHub, and shared automations belong to the repository and run under Copilot's identity. Agent merge watches a pull request, fixes failed workflows and merge conflicts, and can merge automatically once requirements are met. GitHub also announced a memory and context layer, picking a reasoning level instead of a model, a security scanner for agent vulnerabilities, and a move to consumption pricing for Enterprise Cloud customers. Geektime suggests starting with a small pilot and keeping branch protection and review rules tight.
Otomatzia editorial · Published
Source published: · Geektime
