In-Depth
Copilot Workspace Does Web App in Minutes, No Coding Required
If you're lucky enough to get access to the technical preview of Copilot Workspace, you get a taste of coding's AI future. It doesn't involve much coding.
Microsoft-owned GitHub describes Copilot Workspace as "a Copilot-native dev environment, designed for everyday tasks," currently accessible via waitlist.
"From GitHub, you can open a GitHub issue, pull request, template repository, or an ad-hoc task in Copilot Workspace and start working on the problem," says guidance published this month.
Well, that's all fine and good, but I'm no developer and just wanted to see how far we've come on our path to coding with AI only. That is, how close are we to moving on from "low-code" tools that are often falsely branded as "no code" to full-on software development without typing in any 35-character variables or symbol-laden gobbledygook. Let's just describe what we want and let AI build it.
Looks like we're getting pretty darn close.
First, some basics. Some of the things Copilot Workspace is designed to help with include:
- Brainstorm and Plan: Use Copilot Workspace to brainstorm ideas and plan your tasks by describing what you want in natural language
- Implement Code: Generate and implement code suggestions directly within the environment
- Iterate and Edit: Easily iterate on your plans and code, making edits, regenerating suggestions, and undoing changes as needed
- Test and Validate: Validate your code for correctness using an integrated terminal and secure port forwarding
- Collaborate: Share your workspace with your team for feedback and collaboration, with automatic versioning of context and history
- Create Pull Requests: Create pull requests directly from the workspace with a single click
- Work on the Go: Use the GitHub mobile app to browse issues, repos, and PRs, and open them directly within Copilot Workspace
That No. 1 item, brainstorming, certainly plays out upon first opening up the environment, whereupon you are presented with panes to write a new task or brainstorm. But that's only after starting a new session and then deciding to work with an existing repo or start afresh. To start out, I associated with an old Android project I used to fool around with. Copilot Workspace then provided a list of suggested questions:
- Can you provide a general overview of the repository?
- How can the repository be improved?
- What is the purpose of the 'README.md' file?
- What is the significance of the '.gitignore' file?
- More ideas about the 'proguard-project.txt' files?
- Learn about Android project structure
[Click on image for larger view.] Brainstorm Existing Project (source: Ramel).
If you ask for a general overview of the repository, you get this:
[Click on image for larger view.] Overview of Existing Project (source: Ramel).
Of course, before you can do all that, you have to start a new session after you sign in with your GitHub account and go through the two-factor authentication hassle. You get options to choose an existing repo or create a new one.
[Click on image for larger view.] Start a New Session (source: Ramel).
For my exploration of non-coding coding, I chose the latter and was prompted to describe the functionality I would like to create or, again, brainstorm for ideas.
[Click on image for larger view.] Describe or Brainstorm (source: Ramel).
I chose to brainstorm and was presented with some project ideas, including a command-line tool or simple web app. I liked the web app.
[Click on image for larger view.] Project Ideas (source: Ramel).
If you choose to add one of the project ideas to your task, you can describe the functionality you want or, again, brainstorm for ideas. Besides brainstorming, though, a green-highlighted button lets you generate a plan.
[Click on image for larger view.] Generate Plan? (source: Ramel).
That gives you a list of files to add, with the option to add them.
[Click on image for larger view.] Generated Plan (source: Ramel).
Then you can implement selected files, actually generating the code.
[Click on image for larger view.] Generated Code (source: Ramel).
Then I clicked the button to create the repo.
[Click on image for larger view.] Create Repo (source: Ramel).
That gave me a repo.
[Click on image for larger view.] GitHub Repo (source: Ramel).
Then I cloned the repo in Visual Studio.
[Click on image for larger view.] Cloned in Visual Studio (source: Ramel).
Then, just to see if anything worked, I right-clicked on the index.html file in Solution Explorer and asked it to open in Edge. It worked. I also used Copilot to run the "app" via a Node.js web server from the command line in Visual Studio, but that just involved pointing Node to the server.js file and going to the localhost address.
[Click on image for larger view.] Welcome to the Simple Web Application (source: Ramel).
Of course, it's hardly a simple web app. It's a few files displaying some static text. But I didn't code a thing. And this is just a technical preview. And this isn't even the way it was designed to be used. And I just whipped this up shortly after this afternoon learning I was accepted off the waitlist. And I didn't even begin to explore its capabilities like a developer would.
And GitHub Copilot or some other AI will probably be able to do the same thing completely within Visual Studio soon. It probably could now, though it would take more work. Things are probably even more streamlined and quicker with a button to "Open in VS Code" that requires installing an extension, but I didn't follow up on that. Even so, being able to this quickly spin up any kind of web page in Visual Studio while totally hooked up to the project's GitHub repo with all its DevOps functionality, and the enterprise possibilities start to look enticing.
Or, in plainer words: Hold on, folks, you ain't seen nuthin' yet.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.