Microsoft Open Sources GitHub Copilot Extension for VSCode under MIT License

Microsoft announced at Build 2025 that the GitHub Copilot Extension for VSCode will be released as open‑source under the MIT license, allowing developers worldwide to obtain and contribute to the AI‑powered IDE code.

The VSCode team plans to gradually merge the core Copilot Chat capabilities, including the multi‑agent “Agent Mode”, into the VSCode open‑source codebase, enabling any VSCode‑based tool to embed these AI features.

This decision is driven by recent advances in large language model performance, the standardisation of AI interaction UX, a mature open‑source AI tool ecosystem, growing demand for data‑collection transparency, and escalating security threats that benefit from community contributions.

In the coming weeks the team will open‑source the Copilot Chat code, refactor its AI functionality into the VSCode core, maintain performance, extensibility and UI quality, and release a prompt‑testing framework to simplify community contributions.

The project will be tracked via an iteration plan and FAQ, inviting feedback from the community to shape the future of open‑source AI‑enhanced code editors.