Best of GitHub — April 2026

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Article
Collections·2w
Ghostty is leaving GitHub over reliability concerns
Mitchell Hashimoto, creator of Ghostty and Vagrant, is migrating the Ghostty terminal emulator off GitHub after documenting near-daily outages over a month. He cites GitHub Actions downtime and broader reliability issues he attributes to Microsoft's AI-driven platform changes. Personal projects will remain on GitHub, but a read-only mirror will replace the active Ghostty repo. He hasn't chosen a destination yet, evaluating both commercial and open-source alternatives, and hasn't ruled out returning if GitHub demonstrates real improvements.
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Video
Coding with Lewis·5w
GitHub has a malware problem
GitHub's trending page is being exploited by attackers who create repositories with legitimate-sounding names and purchase fake stars to lure developers into downloading malware. Researchers built Star Scout, which scanned six years of GitHub metadata and identified over 6 million suspicious fake stars by detecting ghost accounts and coordinated starring clusters. One group called Banana Squad published nearly 70 repos mimicking real Python security tools, hiding malicious code by padding it with hundreds of blank spaces to push it off-screen. A separate campaign compromised a single GitHub Action and put over 23,000 repositories at risk. The open source ecosystem's trust model is being systematically exploited at scale.
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Article
GitHub Changelog·5w
Pausing new GitHub Copilot Pro trials
GitHub is temporarily pausing new GitHub Copilot Pro free trials due to a significant rise in abuse of the trial system. Existing trials are unaffected, and Copilot Free and paid subscriptions remain available. GitHub is working on improved safeguards and will reopen trials once protections are in place.
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Video
Theo - t3․gg·3w
GitHub has a fake star problem…
A deep dive into the fake GitHub star economy, covering a peer-reviewed CMU/NC State/Socket study that identified ~6 million suspected fake stars across 18,600 repos. The investigation reveals a mature shadow market where stars sell for 3 cents to 90 cents each, with ROI of up to 117,000x when used to manufacture VC funding traction. Key findings include detection heuristics like fork-to-star and watcher-to-star ratios, analysis of specific AI and blockchain repos showing manipulation signals, how VC firms like Redpoint explicitly use star counts as sourcing benchmarks, and GitHub's reactive-only enforcement leaving the fake account infrastructure largely intact. The piece also covers legal exposure under FTC rules and SEC wire fraud precedents, and recommends alternative metrics like contributor activity and package downloads.
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Article
Lobsters·2w
Ditching GitHub
A developer who has maintained the Telethon Python library since 2014 shares their frustrations with GitHub's aggressive AI integration and the broader AI hype cycle. They announce migrating their projects to Codeberg, a non-profit code forge, citing GitHub's declining quality, AI crawler abuse of self-hosted servers, LLM-generated code slop flooding open source projects, and concerns about AI's environmental, social, and labor impacts. The author stops short of fully leaving GitHub due to link-rot concerns and the social capital of 12,000 stars, but advocates for owning your code and hardware.
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Article
Agentic Digest·5w
Claude Opus 4.6 gets quietly nerfed, Grok 4.20 tops BridgeBench
Claude Opus 4.6's thinking budget was quietly cut 67% (from 100 to 25), causing noticeable drops in reasoning quality for subscribers. xAI's Grok 4.20 now leads BridgeBench over GPT-5.4 and Opus 4.6. Anthropic's unreleased Mythos model — capable of autonomously discovering zero-day vulnerabilities and scoring 93.9% on SWE-bench — is restricted to a consortium of AWS, Apple, Google, and Microsoft via Project Glasswing. Vercel open-sourced Open Agents, a reference platform for cloud-based coding agents. Additional updates include Cursor 3 agent splitting, GitHub Copilot data residency and merge conflict fixes, a Microsoft MEMENTO research finding on KV cache persistence, Cloudflare Sandboxes GA, and a Stanford study showing frontier models score 70–80% on vision benchmarks even without images.
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Article
A Java geek·5w
A GitHub agentic workflow
GitHub agentic workflows combine standard GitHub Actions with an AI agent (powered by Copilot) to handle semi-structured or unstructured data tasks. The author describes a real use case: automating the parsing of product release notes to generate upgrade analysis config files — something impossible with deterministic regex-based automation. Key steps covered include initializing workflows via the `gh aw` CLI extension, writing workflows in Markdown and compiling them to YAML, and using a fine-grained `GITHUB_COPILOT_TOKEN`. Practical pitfalls are shared: forgetting to compile Markdown to YAML before pushing, Windows/Linux line-ending issues requiring a `.gitattributes` fix, security concerns around auto-compiling workflows, and the inability to use GitHub Marketplace actions inside agentic workflows. The system prompt used at runtime is also shared, highlighting security hardening and prompt injection defenses.
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Article
The Art of Simplicity·6w
Awesome GitHub Copilot just got awesommer (if that’s a word)
The Awesome GitHub Copilot repository, a community hub for custom instructions, prompts, agents, and chat modes, now has a dedicated website and Learning Hub. The site at awesome-copilot.github.com offers full-text search across 175+ agents, 208+ skills, 176+ instructions, and more, with category filters, modal previews, and one-click installs into VS Code. The Learning Hub explains core concepts like agents, skills, hooks, and plugins. The plugin system lets users bundle related agents and skills into installable packages, and Awesome GitHub Copilot is now a default plugin marketplace for GitHub Copilot CLI and VS Code.
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Article
freeCodeCamp·6w
AI Tools for Developers –
A freeCodeCamp course covering AI tools for developers, including GitHub Copilot, Anthropic's Claude Code, and Gemini CLI for AI pair programming and agentic terminal workflows. Also covers OpenClaw for locally hosted open-source AI automation and CodeRabbit for AI-driven pull request analysis. The course is 1.5 hours and available on YouTube.
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Article
Lobsters·2w
Github banned me for no understandable reason
A developer shares their experience of being unexpectedly banned from GitHub with no explanation, no email notification, and a frustrating support process that required having an active account to appeal. The ban erased all their contributions, comments, and pull requests, and blocked access to features like code search, GitHub Sponsors, CI artifacts, and HACS for Home Assistant. The author speculates the ban may have been triggered by adblocker filter lists, an ad-blocking tool for a VR game, or a joke repo using Unicode text-reversal characters. They urge developers to migrate away from GitHub given the risk of sudden account erasure. The account was reinstated roughly three hours after the post was published, seemingly prompted by the public attention.
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Article
Where's Your Ed At·3w
Four Horsemen of the AIpocalypse
Ed Zitron argues the AI industry is in a dangerous bubble, presenting four major warning signs: Anthropic's chronic service outages and degraded model quality (Claude Opus 4.7 reportedly worse than 4.6), the revelation that Claude Mythos was held back due to capacity constraints rather than safety concerns, NVIDIA selling more GPUs than can physically be installed with only 15.2GW of data center capacity actually under construction through 2028, and AI inference costs spiraling out of control — with some companies spending up to 10% of headcount costs on LLM tokens. Microsoft is moving GitHub Copilot to token-based billing after costs nearly doubled week-over-week, and Anthropic has already shifted enterprise customers to per-token API rates. Zitron contends that AI revenues are massively overstated through fraudulent ARR accounting, that both Anthropic and OpenAI are burning billions while providing subsidized, unreliable services, and that the entire industry's survival depends on infinite venture capital rather than genuine economic value.
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Article
Visual Studio Code·3w
Visual Studio Code 1.118
VS Code 1.118 (Insiders) release notes covering changes from April 21–23, 2026. Key updates include Copilot CLI SDK improvements such as session-title API adoption for session naming, keybindings (Ctrl+1/Ctrl+2) for switching between sessions in the Agents app, auto model selection support, model badges in chat panel responses, and a node-pty resolution fix that eliminates the need to copy binaries at build or runtime. Also included is an opt-in for TypeScript 7.0 nightly builds.
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Article
GitHub Changelog·5w
Copilot CLI activity now included in usage metrics totals and feature breakdowns
GitHub Copilot's CLI activity is now integrated into the top-level usage metrics totals and dimensional breakdowns in the Copilot usage metrics API. Previously, CLI metrics were reported separately in a standalone `totals_by_cli` section, leaving top-level totals reflecting IDE activity only. Now fields like `code_generation_activity_count`, `code_acceptance_activity_count`, and `loc_added_sum` combine IDE and CLI data. CLI also appears as `feature=copilot_cli` in feature, model, and language breakdowns. Admins should note that top-level totals have changed meaning and may see higher numbers if their dashboards assumed IDE-only values.
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Article
Thomas Thornton·5w
What Makes a Good GitHub Copilot Agent Skill?
Designing effective GitHub Copilot agent skills requires more than writing good documentation. The key design choices include: crafting precise YAML description fields that mirror real user phrasing and include explicit negative scope (what the skill is NOT for); keeping the skill body lean using progressive disclosure with references/ directories for detail; explaining reasoning behind instructions rather than issuing blunt rules; testing trigger activation against messy real-world prompts; and bundling reusable assets for consistency. Skills should be treated like microservices — clear boundaries, predictable behavior when coexisting with other skills. The best skills are derived from workflows that already succeeded in practice, capturing reusable decision logic rather than one-off specifics.
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Article
Where's Your Ed At·2w
AI's Economics Don't Make Sense
A detailed critique of the economics underpinning generative AI, arguing that subscription-based pricing for LLM services was fundamentally deceptive and unsustainable. GitHub Copilot's shift to token-based billing is used as a case study showing that AI companies have been subsidizing massive compute costs for years, training users to consume far more than their subscriptions cover. The piece breaks down the broken unit economics of AI data centers (using a 100MW theoretical model and Stargate Abilene as examples), estimates that $156.8B in annual compute revenue is needed just for data centers currently under construction, and argues that OpenAI and Anthropic have no credible path to profitability. The author contends that hiding true token costs from users was a deliberate strategy to grow adoption, and that the transition to usage-based billing will expose just how expensive and often unjustifiable AI tooling really is.
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Article
Armin Ronacher·2w
Before GitHub
A personal reflection on the evolution of open source hosting from self-managed Subversion/Trac setups and SourceForge, through Bitbucket, to GitHub's dominance. GitHub transformed open source by removing friction from publishing and contributing, accidentally becoming a critical archive and trust layer for the entire software supply chain. Now, with GitHub showing signs of decline — leadership vacuum, AI noise, product churn — notable projects are migrating to alternatives like Codeberg. The author argues that decentralization may restore autonomy but risks losing the social context (issues, discussions, release history) that GitHub preserved. The core call to action: the open source community needs a publicly funded, endowment-backed archive that preserves source code, release artifacts, and project context independent of any single company's business model.
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Article
proflead·4w
GitHub Copilot Agents Explained
A practical guide to GitHub Copilot Agents covering agent architecture (LLM + tools + context), the differences between VS Code, CLI, and Cloud agents, and how to build custom agents using `.agent.md` files. Aimed at developers looking to integrate AI workflows into their development process.
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Article
Thomas Thornton·3w
Terraform Module Design Is the Hard Part – So I Built an Agent Skill for It
Building Terraform modules is easy; designing them well is not. This post introduces a GitHub Copilot agent skill called terraform-module-creator that prioritizes design judgment over code generation. Rather than turning a prompt directly into files, the skill follows a deliberate workflow: evaluating whether a module should exist, defining its boundary, designing a minimal interface, and only then generating code. It integrates Azure MCP and HashiCorp Terraform Registry MCP to pull live provider documentation and best practices at design time. The skill produces full module scaffolding including README, terraform-docs config, runnable examples, and validation steps (fmt, validate, tflint). It also supports review and refactor modes for existing modules, and encourages versioning discipline for shared modules. Core design principles include KISS, DRY with judgment, clear responsibility, and opinionated safe defaults.
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Article
marmelab·5w
AI Strikes Back: Using an LLM to write COBOL
A developer used GitHub Copilot to build a browser-based COBOL IDE with zero prior COBOL experience, and it worked impressively well. However, reading the generated code revealed a critical remote code execution vulnerability: user-submitted COBOL was compiled and run directly on the server with no sandboxing. Copilot never flagged the security issue unprompted, but identified it clearly when explicitly asked. Three remediation approaches are discussed — Docker container isolation, syscall filtering, and compiling COBOL to WebAssembly for client-side execution. The key takeaway is that AI coding tools build what you describe, not what is safe to deploy; the judgment to ask the right security questions still requires a developer in the loop.
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Article
Where's Your Ed At·4w
Exclusive: Microsoft To Shift GitHub Copilot Users To Token-Based Billing, Reduce Rate Limits
Leaked internal documents reveal Microsoft plans to pause new signups for GitHub Copilot individual and student tiers, transition users from request-based to token-based billing, and reduce rate limits across Pro, Pro+, Business, and Enterprise plans. The weekly cost of running GitHub Copilot has nearly doubled since January, forcing Microsoft to end subsidized pricing. Anthropic's Opus models will be removed from the cheaper Pro tier, and Opus 4.6/4.5 will be phased out of Pro+ as the platform moves to Opus 4.7 — which carries a 7.5x request multiplier, effectively making it 250% more expensive than the previous Opus 4.6. These changes mirror similar moves by Anthropic and other AI companies shifting enterprise users to usage-based billing amid rising compute costs.
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Agentic Digest·3w
Microsoft and OpenAI rewrite their deal, Anthropic quietly paywalls Opus in Claude Code
A packed week in AI developer tooling: Microsoft and OpenAI restructured their partnership, ending exclusivity and letting OpenAI serve customers on any cloud through 2032. Anthropic began charging Claude Code Pro users extra to access Opus, citing heavy compute consumption under agentic workloads. GitHub is switching Copilot to token-based billing on June 1, removing flat-fee premium requests. China's NDRC blocked Meta's $2B acquisition of Manus, setting a regulatory precedent for Chinese-founded AI startups. Notable items include Kimi K2.6's 1T-parameter open-weight model, OpenAI models coming to AWS Bedrock, a 73-extension supply chain attack on VS Code and forks, DORA data showing AI-heavy teams shipping 19% slower, and xAI's Grok Build expected next week as a Claude Code competitor.
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Article
Supabase·2w
Introducing the OSSCAR Index
Supabase and >commit have launched the OSSCAR Index (Open Source Supabase Commit Analytical Ranking), a quarterly leaderboard tracking the fastest-growing open source GitHub organizations. Unlike traditional rankings based on raw totals like stars or downloads, OSSCAR measures growth rate using three signals: net new GitHub stars, unique contributors, and package downloads from npm, PyPI, and Cargo. These are normalized and combined via an L² norm into a composite score. Projects are split into two divisions — Emerging (under 1,000 stars) and Scaling (1,000+ stars) — to enable fair comparisons. The Q1 2026 edition is live, with AI agent frameworks dominating the Emerging division and a breakout project called Openclaw topping the Scaling division. The site, data pipeline, and scoring code are all open source on GitHub.
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Theo - t3․gg·6w
I got DMCA'd by Anthropic (not a joke)
A developer recounts receiving a DMCA takedown notice from Anthropic on GitHub, affecting their fork of the official Claude Code repository — a fork containing only a one-word change. The DMCA was part of a mass takedown targeting 8,100 repositories, which turned out to be a miscommunication between Anthropic and GitHub. Anthropic quickly retracted the notice for all repos except those mirroring the actual leaked source code. The author ultimately partially defends Anthropic, crediting their transparent crisis communications, while strongly criticizing their decision to keep Claude Code closed source as the root cause of the entire situation.
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Agentic Digest·4w
Kimi K2.6 lands as a real open-source coding agent, GitHub Copilot closes signups
Kimi K2.6, a 1T-parameter MoE open-source model from Moonshot AI, launched with strong benchmark scores (80.2% SWE-Bench Verified) and ships in Fireworks, OpenCode, and HuggingChat. GitHub Copilot paused new signups for Pro, Pro+, and Student plans as agentic workflows blew past flat-rate cost assumptions, with Opus models being tiered up. Anthropic silently cut Claude Code's prompt cache TTL from 1 hour to 5 minutes in April, causing significant cost spikes for developers in sustained agentic sessions. Claude Desktop was found to silently install a browser bridge granting broad access without user consent. Other notable items include Cursor 3's shift to parallel agent orchestration, a $5B Amazon-Anthropic deal expansion, an MCP STDIO RCE disclosure affecting ~200K servers, and OpenAI losing three senior executives in one day.
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Visual Studio Blog·4w
From AI to .NET: 20 VS Live! Las Vegas Sessions You Can Watch Now
Microsoft has published 20 sessions from VS Live! Las Vegas 2026 on the Visual Studio YouTube channel, releasing approximately two per day. Topics covered include AI-assisted development with GitHub Copilot, modern .NET and C#, cloud-native apps on Azure, developer productivity, and real-world architecture. Notable sessions include keynotes on Visual Studio 2027 and AI applications, plus talks on ASP.NET Core, GitHub Actions, caching in .NET, and VS Code integration. Upcoming in-person VS Live! events are scheduled through 2027, with discounts available for Visual Studio subscribers.
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