Getting started: VS Code and Copilot from zero
The whole series assumes you already have VS Code, GitHub Copilot, and a workspace folder. If you don’t, here is the 15-minute path to getting there. No coding background required.
Category: Copilot Productivity
Using VS Code and GitHub Copilot as a personal productivity environment.
Your chat history is a searchable knowledge base
Every chat you’ve ever had with GitHub Copilot is saved as a plain text file on your disk. Searchable, quotable, re-usable. Annual review prep, cross-chat handoffs, and ‘what was that thing I figured out three weeks ago’ all become trivial.
Git as the undo button for everything you write
Auto-commit every 30 minutes via Task Scheduler. The cost of ‘try something risky’ drops to zero. Git isn’t just for code. It’s the safety net under a knowledge worker’s notes.
Subagents: send the intern to do the legwork
A good assistant doesn’t do everything themselves. They send the intern. Subagents are read-only sub-chats your main chat spawns to do the heavy reading and report back. Your conversation keeps its memory.