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GitHub Copilot SDK Tutorial (Python)

A step-by-step guide to building real applications with the GitHub Copilot SDK for Python.

New to the SDK? Start with the language-agnostic overview and concepts — what the GitHub Copilot SDK is and is not, plus common setup for installing the Copilot CLI and authenticating with GitHub. This page focuses on the Python edition.

Tutorial Structure

Each tutorial pairs a documentation page with a self-contained CLI script that you can run directly:

# Tutorial Script What You Learn
1 CLI Chatbot 01_chat_bot.py CopilotClient, sessions, single prompt, interactive loop
2 Issue Triage Bot 02_issue_triage.py Custom tools with @define_tool, Pydantic I/O
3 Streaming Review 03_streaming_review.py Streaming with ASSISTANT_MESSAGE_DELTA
4 Skills Doc Generation 04_skills_docgen.py Agent Skills via SKILL.md files
5 Audit Log 05_audit_hooks.py Session hooks, permission handling
6 BYOK Azure OpenAI 06_byok_azure_openai.py Bring Your Own Key with Azure OpenAI

All scripts live in src/python/scripts/tutorials/.

Quick Start

Make sure the Copilot CLI is installed and authenticated first — see the common Getting Started guide. Then:

# 1. Install SDK and tutorial dependencies (uses src/python/pyproject.toml)
cd src/python
uv sync --all-groups

# 2. Run your first tutorial script (the SDK launches the CLI on demand)
uv run python scripts/tutorials/01_chat_bot.py --prompt "Hello, Copilot!"

For Python-specific setup, see Getting Started (Python).

Observability

All Python tutorial scripts keep telemetry off by default. To export OpenTelemetry traces, start the local collector stack and pass the shared --otel-* options:

uv run python scripts/tutorials/01_chat_bot.py \
 --otel-endpoint http://localhost:4318 \
 --otel-bsp-schedule-delay 500 \
 --prompt "Hello, Copilot!"

The same settings can still come from the environment variables: OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT, OTEL_INSTRUMENTATION_GENAI_CAPTURE_MESSAGE_CONTENT, and OTEL_BSP_SCHEDULE_DELAY. See Observability with OpenTelemetry.

Scope

In scope:

  • GitHub Copilot SDK concepts (what it is / is not)
  • Architecture and operation principles
  • Python SDK API design and interfaces
  • Sample code and step-by-step guides for concrete use cases
  • Agent Skills, Custom Tools, Session Hooks, Permission Handling, Streaming, BYOK

Out of scope:

  • TypeScript / .NET SDK details (see References)
  • Copilot CLI standalone usage guide
  • Production scaling and infrastructure
  • GitHub OAuth App authentication flow (see CopilotReportForge docs)
  • template_github_copilot package internals (tutorial scripts are self-contained)

Further Reading

Document Description
Overview Language-agnostic concepts and language chooser
Architecture How the SDK, CLI server, and Copilot API interact
Getting Started (Python) Python-specific setup and first run
CLI Server Mode Run the Copilot CLI as a standalone TCP server
References API reference and external links