Working with AI, Not Against It: A GitHub Copilot Demo

In this session, I’ll walk you through how developers can utilise GitHub Copilot as a practical AI assistant, not as a replacement for thinking, but as a tool to accelerate everyday development work.

Rather than covering everything Copilot can do, we’ll focus on one simple, real project and use it to demonstrate how GitHub Copilot helps at different stages of development: writing code, improving structure, and reducing repetitive effort.

We’ll build a small web application using basic web technologies, and throughout the process, I’ll show how GitHub Copilot can:

- Generate code snippets and small features
- Help reason about implementation decisions
- Assist with refactoring and cleanup
- Support tasks like test generation and commit messaging

The goal is not complexity, but clarity, showing how AI fits naturally into a developer’s workflow when used intentionally.
By the end of the session, you’ll have:

- A clear understanding of what GitHub Copilot is good at (and what it’s not)
- A realistic example of using AI to build a simple project end-to-end
- Practical ideas you can apply immediately in your own work

This talk is aimed at developers of any level who are curious about using AI to work faster, stay focused, and reduce friction, without losing control of their code.

1. A clear, realistic understanding of how to use GitHub Copilot effectively without losing control of their code. 2. A practical, end-to-end example of AI-assisted development on a simple real-world project. 3. Actionable ideas they can apply immediately to speed up everyday development work.