GitHub Copilot App Canvases: Hub, Actions, Automation, & More

Speaker: The GitHub copilot app is Speaker: changing how I work with agents Speaker: every single day, and I'm still Speaker: using tons of tools vs code, the Speaker: CLI and Visual Studio twenty Speaker: twenty six when I need to do Speaker: deep debugging and profiling of Speaker: my applications. Speaker: But there is a hidden feature in the copilot app, and it is a Speaker: complete game changer when working with agents. Speaker: Your backlog pairs, actions, agent sessions, anything really. Speaker: And it is canvases. Speaker: You may have seen a sneak peek, Speaker: but I'm going to dive in deep Speaker: and how I've evolved, how I Speaker: develop every single day Speaker: leveraging canvases. Speaker: So let's get into it. Speaker: I think the best way to understand how a canvas works is Speaker: to actually build a canvas. Speaker: So let's just start right there. Speaker: So I'm going to go into a new session and say create canvas. Speaker: Let's create a canvas that Speaker: allows me to do a little bit of Speaker: issue triage and specifically Speaker: assign weights and to all the Speaker: issues for the current repo that Speaker: I'm in.

Speaker: I want to see detailed Speaker: information that's coming from Speaker: those issues. Speaker: And then I want to assign these Speaker: weights and then stack rank them Speaker: by weights. Speaker: As far as how much effort is going to be put into them. Speaker: Okay. Speaker: So I'm going to send that off to Speaker: the agent and it's going to get Speaker: to work building my canvas for Speaker: me. Speaker: Then we're just going to let it cook. Speaker: Okay, perfect. Speaker: It looks like we have our full issue triage here. Speaker: So I can go ahead and open this up. Speaker: Oh that's really neat. Speaker: So I can go ahead and tap on one of these and get more detailed Speaker: information about it. Speaker: Open it on GitHub, and then I Speaker: can go ahead and give it like a Speaker: score. Speaker: So I could say, you know, urgency here on this one is a Speaker: two effort is going to be one and save it. Speaker: And this is kind of saves it locally for me. Speaker: So I can go ahead and do this. Speaker: Now. Speaker: I could go ahead and say save it and then update the issue. Speaker: Go ahead and leave a comment Speaker: back, maybe have a little Speaker: detailed information here for Speaker: it. Speaker: And now I have all of this right Speaker: here ready to go diving through Speaker: this information. Speaker: I can tell it to do anything, right. Speaker: So here's just a rendering and showing the markdown. Speaker: But I could say render the markdown right. Speaker: And I have to give it more verbose information.

Speaker: But just literally in a few minutes, I've created an entire Speaker: issue triage for me. Speaker: For this project, I can have Speaker: these canvases unique for every Speaker: single project, how my team Speaker: works, how I work, and how I Speaker: want to work with issues with Speaker: pairs or writing comments, doing Speaker: anything. Speaker: And you can create them all in Speaker: minutes and share them with your Speaker: team, or create them for Speaker: yourself or share them with the Speaker: world. Speaker: It's really neat to see these canvases come to life and help Speaker: you manage your backlog, but do unique, fun things. Speaker: Okay, this is a pretty cool example because I've actually Speaker: been working on my own sort of hub where I can get a complete Speaker: overview of all the projects that I've been working on and Speaker: help me triage even further. Speaker: So let me go ahead and show you Speaker: what I've been cooking up Speaker: personally. Speaker: So over here, I've created something called the James Hub Speaker: and the James Hub. Speaker: Let me make it a little bit bigger. Speaker: Here is something that I Speaker: created, and I have a generic Speaker: sort of hub too that's out Speaker: there. Speaker: And this allows me to do things like track very specific repos. Speaker: And I can see the work here of Speaker: open PRS or open issues, things Speaker: that were human authored, maybe Speaker: stale releases or failed Speaker: deployments that I could look Speaker: at.

Speaker: I could search for specific repos. Speaker: And I'm just looking at the sort Speaker: of dashboard, sort of the main Speaker: hub here of all the repos that I Speaker: care about right now, I have Speaker: five hundred and forty some odd Speaker: repos. Speaker: I don't care about all of them. Speaker: I care about the ones that I'm actively working on. Speaker: What I love about this is as I'm Speaker: diving through, I've made it so Speaker: I can like see the open issues Speaker: that I have or click on the Speaker: details here, get information Speaker: about the deployments, about the Speaker: releases. Speaker: I can tap on an issue here. Speaker: I can act on it. Speaker: I could go in, review it. Speaker: I can see that, oh, I have a plan mode here. Speaker: I can implement it. Speaker: I can refine the spec, assign it to a cloud session, or just like Speaker: write a comment on it. Speaker: So I don't even have to leave Speaker: the GitHub copilot app to do any Speaker: of that. Speaker: So let's say I refine the spec. Speaker: Now once I tap on that, what Speaker: this is going to do is it's Speaker: going to send off a message and Speaker: it's going to say open a new Speaker: session specifically to refine Speaker: this. Speaker: So it says don't implement code, just do these things. Speaker: So this is this two way. Speaker: I've basically programmed the canvas to be able to communicate Speaker: and spin up new sessions. Speaker: So we see it spin up right here.

Speaker: So that's going to get to work as a session ID and it's going Speaker: to do spec refinement. Speaker: So I just get back to work as that is refining. Speaker: Now here I can also go through I can look at this focus plan, Speaker: which I really, really like. Speaker: The focus plan allows me to say I'm in a really creative mood. Speaker: I only have maybe two hours today and you know, I want to Speaker: focus on new code. Speaker: So I have all these different options here. Speaker: What this will do is it'll give me information specifically Speaker: about things I could work on. Speaker: So here there's this new aspect Speaker: ratio, some alignment controls, Speaker: resize handles. Speaker: I can tap on one of those. Speaker: And just like I did before I could plan it out, implement it Speaker: or assign it to a cloud agent. Speaker: So this is a great way where I'm Speaker: like looking at this like, you Speaker: know what? Speaker: Yeah, this is really, really cool. Speaker: Maybe I'll just, you know, assign that to a cloud agent and Speaker: it's going to get to work right away for me. Speaker: And I can come back after I eat Speaker: breakfast or something like Speaker: that. Speaker: So this is like how I've sort of created my hub. Speaker: And I was really inspired by Speaker: this interview with Scott Speaker: Hanselman showing off how he's Speaker: using canvases on how he Speaker: specifically kind of building Speaker: this hub for himself, but Speaker: there's a lot more that you can Speaker: do.

Speaker: So for example, let me go down into my tiny clips over here Speaker: where I have a bunch of different canvases that I have Speaker: set up and installed. Speaker: So if I click on this button, I Speaker: can click and on this repo Speaker: Actions hub, this is one that I Speaker: built because I have a lot of Speaker: actions and specifically here, Speaker: and it kind of looks very Speaker: similar, but I have the tiny Speaker: clips. Speaker: It has nine workflows I can go through and see. Speaker: I have build actions. Speaker: Um, I have ones for release for Speaker: the windows build for the Speaker: submission here. Speaker: So let's say I just wanted to Speaker: take a look at this and the Speaker: build one. Speaker: I could say details. Speaker: It's going to load this information. Speaker: It's going to give me all the information about recent runs. Speaker: I can take a look at one of Speaker: these recent runs, see what Speaker: actually happened. Speaker: Okay. Speaker: Here's all the different steps that we're going through. Speaker: That looks pretty good. Speaker: Let's just go ahead and run this. Speaker: This is actually going to trigger a workflow. Speaker: So in this in this case, it Speaker: doesn't actually declare a Speaker: workflow dispatch. Speaker: so that's good to know. Speaker: So let's go down over to the Speaker: windows build, which I think Speaker: does.

Speaker: So I'm going to run that one. Speaker: And this is now going to fire off that windows build. Speaker: And then I can see the action being triggered right away and Speaker: everything going through this. Speaker: So I can actually take a look at it. Speaker: And we can see up top, it's been updated automatically. Speaker: Now if there's an issue, I'll be able to send that back Speaker: automatically to it. Speaker: All right. Speaker: Cool. Speaker: So how did I build this? Speaker: Right. Speaker: That's a good question. Speaker: And so here for example, if I go down, I can see that I have my, Speaker: uh, actions repo canvas. Speaker: And I actually did this with one specific prompt, which was the Speaker: create canvas skill. Speaker: And here I just asked it to show Speaker: me all the actions for the repo Speaker: I'm in, allowing me to see the Speaker: status and the runs for the new Speaker: ones. Speaker: So I just added that and then it Speaker: created it automatically just Speaker: like that. Speaker: So I can go and see down here that it just boom, did it Speaker: scanned everything and it just installed it right away. Speaker: So after that, I then took it Speaker: and I put it up on to awesome Speaker: copilot. Speaker: So over here on Awesome Copilot, you can click on the extensions Speaker: for canvases and you can get a bunch of them here.

Speaker: So there's ones for diagrams. Speaker: I have gesture ones. Speaker: There's this repo actions one. Speaker: That's the one that I created. Speaker: And there's also ones for like Tiny Tool Town Submitter and Speaker: Pac-Man, for example. Speaker: So let's take a look at the tiny Tool Town submitter. Speaker: If I come over here into my captions converter. Speaker: So that one that I was just building, I could actually come Speaker: over and say new, and I'm going to say import canvas from gist Speaker: or URL, and I can decide if I want a user scope, project Speaker: scope, or even session scope. Speaker: So that's what I'm going to say, user scope, because I'm going to Speaker: submit a bunch of my tools to Scott Hanselman all the time. Speaker: So I'm going to fire that off. Speaker: And then that's going to install Speaker: the tiny Tool Town submitter Speaker: right here. Speaker: And I can go ahead and open that up. Speaker: So here I'm going to make this a little bit bigger again. Speaker: And what's cool about this is Speaker: that it takes a look and it Speaker: says, yeah, tiny Tool town, it's Speaker: found the Readme, it's found the Speaker: license. Speaker: It has an image. Speaker: It can scan the repository. Speaker: I can generate options for Speaker: different subtitles about the Speaker: tool. Speaker: It'll give me information. Speaker: So it's going to send that off to copilot to kind of generate Speaker: it based on the Readme.

Speaker: It's going to grab all the information. Speaker: It even has this little page previewer here. Speaker: So I can go ahead and pick one of those, for example. Speaker: I can check the checkboxes for Speaker: the requirements and it even Speaker: gives me this little finish curb Speaker: appeal here. Speaker: So for example, you know, it's detected that there's not really Speaker: documentation or usage. Speaker: I can go ahead and start an Speaker: improvement session, send that Speaker: off. Speaker: I can one click submit it directly to Tiny Tool Town and Speaker: it'll submit it all the way over to, to Scott to put it into tiny Speaker: tool dot com. Speaker: And here it is. Speaker: Here's the different options here. Speaker: So I can click on that. Speaker: Boom. Speaker: Good to go for these detailed information. Speaker: And that's doing all this parsing just off of the actual Speaker: Readme which is really cool. Speaker: So tiny tool town you can easily Speaker: submit now as you're building Speaker: these out, which is really, Speaker: really neat. Speaker: I'll point out here that they're Speaker: not all about actually triaging Speaker: here. Speaker: For example, token Pac-Man is one that munches on tokens as Speaker: you're using your credits. Speaker: Just kind of like. Speaker: Really fun thing to see. Speaker: My other favorite one here is actually the. Speaker: Agent arcade, which is from Dan, who actually has five different Speaker: retro mini games that you can play inside of the copilot app Speaker: while you're cooking.

Speaker: Anyways, give all of these a try and try out canvases for Speaker: yourself with create canvas. Speaker: All right, that's GitHub copilot apps, canvases. Speaker: Have you tried them yet? Speaker: It took me a while to really Speaker: fully grasp the concept, but now Speaker: I'm building new canvases almost Speaker: every single week to evolve how Speaker: I'm working in different Speaker: projects. Speaker: You got to give them a try and Speaker: check out Awesome Copilot for Speaker: some of the community ones, Speaker: including ones that I've shit Speaker: myself. Speaker: If you've built some awesome canvases, share what you are Speaker: building below in the comments. Speaker: I'd love to hear from you. Speaker: That's gonna do it for this one. Speaker: So until next time, thanks for watching.