Unleash the power of AI-native development

Published via GitHub Executive Insights

It’s clear that the software development lifecycle is undergoing a seismic shift driven by artificial intelligence. To not just compete, but to lead in this new era, your teams require the most powerful, most advanced, and most familiar tools—the ones they already know, love, and trust.

At Google Next 2025, GitHub’s Chief Product Officer, Mario Rodriguez, hosted a talk about how enterprises can leverage AI to accelerate innovation in today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape.

Catch the video of Mario’s talk right here or jump below for key takeaways:

Key insights

AI-native is the new frontier

At GitHub, we’re moving beyond AI-infused systems to AI-native platforms. What does this mean in practice? It means that AI is integrated into every phase of the SDLC and not just an add-on. It also means that AI agents will be capable of predicting and executing complex tasks with natural language — working as a true collaborator with developers in real-time.

For example, we recently rolled out agent mode for all VS Code users. So now, when Copilot is in agent mode, it can iterate not just its own output but also on the result of that output: iterating until it has completed every possible subtask. (Yes, that means it’s actually inferring additional tasks that weren’t specified, but were also needed.) And this is just the beginning.

Our goal: creating an SDLC powered by an agentic layer where AI agents work alongside developers synchronously and asynchronously, proactively assisting with tasks like code writing, debugging, testing, and documentation, to improve productivity and free up developer time to focus on high-level, strategic work.

We’re democratizing software creation

With the changes AI is making to our software delivery processes, we believe that in the future, anyone, regardless of technical expertise, will be able to create software. From kids building games to busy professionals bringing ideas to life, AI is lowering the barrier to entry, which in turn opens up new possibilities for innovation within your organization, as you tap into a wider pool of talent and ideas.

Introducing Project Padawan and Code Review

Project Padawan aims to make Copilot an autonomous contributor to every repository. Here’s what we mean: With Project Padawan, you’ll be able to assign issues to GitHub Copilot and have it produce fully tested pull requests. Once a task is finished, Copilot will assign you to review the pull request and it’ll work to address your feedback.

But we aren’t just talking about the future here. GitHub has tools available today that are rooted in agentic experiences to revolutionize your workflows. For example, we launched Copilot code review, so you can get fast, AI-powered feedback instantly. With code review, Copilot automatically analyzes pull requests — spotting bugs, enforcing best practices, and providing actionable improvement suggestions as you work. This frees developers up to focus on higher level problems.

Security by default isn’t optional: It’s a necessity

In an AI-driven world, enterprises need to prioritize building robust and resilient systems that can withstand evolving threats. Luckily, our AI tools are also helping organizations improve their security postures, too. With the above-mentioned code review, teams now have an extra “colleague” looking over their code (before a human gets to it) to search for bugs and make suggestions on how to fix it. “A reviewer at your fingertips. It’s that easy,” says Mario.

How Verily (an Alphabet company) tailors AI to meet their needs

Verily sits at the intersection of tech, data science, and healthcare — offering AI-enabled solutions that transform health data into insights and actions to accelerate research and improve care for individuals and communities. The challenge was finding a way to accelerate innovation while staying compliant with the highly regulated healthcare ecosystem.

This is why they created VIDA, a VS Code plugin (which invokes Copilot for its LLM capabilities) that automates tasks for their developers. With VIDA, developers can work across the entirety of Verily’s source code to quickly get the context they need without leaving the IDE. This helps them with writing code, debugging features, testing, configurations, and documentation — and demonstrates the power of tailoring AI to meet unique organizational needs and workflows.

The only constant is change: Embrace it

We are currently in a phase of constant change. The best thing organizations can do is to embrace it by allowing teams to experiment with new AI tools. Because with the right tools and technologies, teams have the opportunity to accelerate development, improve code quality, and truly innovate at speed.

“We’re giving you the tools you need to create what you can’t yet imagine,” says Mario. “We’re the fuel. You’re the rocketship.”

Want to learn more about the strategic role of AI and other innovations at GitHub? Explore Executive Insights for more thought leadership on the future of technology and business.