Open Source


The Rise of OpenTelemetry in Microsoft Dev Tooling

CNCF graduation, Microsoft tooling updates and cloud-provider support show broader OpenTelemetry adoption across developer platforms.

GitHub Spec Kit Takes Off as Antidote to Piecemeal 'Vibe Coding'

GitHub Spec Kit, open sourced last September as a toolkit for spec-driven development with AI coding agents, is seeing renewed attention as recent releases and a May 8 livestream show the project expanding around the idea that code should be generated from, governed by and traceable to specifications.

Microsoft Expands Quantum Development Kit with New Open-Source Tools, VS Code Integration

Microsoft released new open‑source quantum development tools that deepen VS Code and Copilot integration while targeting real‑world hybrid quantum workloads in chemistry, optimization, and machine learning.

Google's Antigravity IDE Sparks Forking Debate

Google's new Antigravity IDE spurred much developer debate focusing heavily on its apparent status as a Visual Studio Code fork, with developers debating why another fork is needed, what it means for the VS Code ecosystem, and how open source reuse, lock-in, and fragmentation should be handled in AI-focused development tools.

GitHub Spec Kit Experiment: 'A Lot of Questions'

Microsoft has published a new post explaining GitHub Spec Kit, clarifying its experimental approach to spec-driven development and how its Specify CLI, prompts, and templates structure AI coding into specify/plan/tasks phases.

Microsoft's 'Awesome Copilot MCP Server' Joined by MCP Registry

Microsoft introduced the Awesome Copilot MCP Server for GitHub Copilot customizations as the MCP community unveiled the official MCP Registry, a cross-company catalog for discovering servers.

GitHub Open Sources Kit for Spec-Driven AI Development

GitHub’s open-source Spec Kit formalizes spec-driven development for AI coding agents by providing a CLI, templates, and prompts that move work through specification, plan, tasks, and implementation, with details in the announcement and code in the repository.

Dedicated Python Environments Tool Rolls Out in VS Code Update

Microsoft is rolling out a new Python Environments extension in VS Code, now reaching 20% of stable channel users. The tool provides a dedicated panel for creating, managing and assigning environments, with APIs for third-party integration, while also laying groundwork for community-driven environment manager support.

Introduction to Actor-based Development with Project Orleans

Learn what Project Orleans, an open-source, cross-platform framework from Microsoft for building distributed, scalable, and high-availability applications using the virtual actor model.

Forked Again: AWS's Kiro Is Latest AI Assistant Based on VS Code

AWS has launched Kiro, a spec-driven, agentic AI IDE based on Visual Studio Code. It joins a growing lineup of VS Code forks built for AI-assisted development, and it arrives just as Microsoft pushes to make the open-source core of VS Code fully AI-native.

Prompt Engineering? See VS Code Team's System Prompts for Copilot Chat, Now Open Source

"Explore the codebase and learn how agent mode is implemented, what context is sent to LLMs, and how we engineer our prompts."

VS Code Goes Transparent as Open-Source AI Editor

Microsoft has open sourced the GitHub Copilot Chat extension, marking a major step in turning VS Code into an open-source AI editor focused on transparency, collaboration, and community-driven development.

Uno Platform Studio and 'Hot Design' Reach General Availability

Uno Platform, a .NET-centric open source project for building single-codebase apps across multiple platforms, this week announced v6.0 of its flagship offering, which introduces a zero-install, web-based IDE for rapid cross-platform development, alongside a modernized app architecture that embraces MVU and .NET-style extensions.

Uno Platform Takes 'Hot Design' for Cross-Platform .NET Apps to Public Beta

Uno Platform has taken its "Hot Design" feature to public beta, extending the "Hot Reload" paradigm with functionality to visually edit and refine a running app in real-time.

Microsoft Previews Copilot AI for Open-Source Eclipse IDE

Catering to Java jockeys, Microsoft is yet again expanding the sprawling reach of its Copilot-branded AI assistants, previewing a coding tool for the open-source Eclipse IDE.

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