How Microsoft’s developers are using AI | The VergeSkip to main contentThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.The VergeThe Verge logo.TechReviewsScienceEntertainmentAIHamburger Navigation ButtonThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.Hamburger Navigation ButtonNavigation DrawerThe VergeThe Verge logo.Login / Sign UpcloseCloseSearchTechExpandAmazonAppleFacebookGoogleMicrosoftSamsungBusinessCreatorsMobilePolicySecurityTransportationReviewsExpandLaptopsPhonesHeadphonesTabletsSmart HomeSmartwatchesSpeakersDronesScienceExpandSpaceEnergyEnvironmentHealthEntertainmentExpandGamesTV ShowsMoviesAudioAIVerge ShoppingExpandBuying GuidesDealsGift GuidesSee All ShoppingCarsExpandElectric CarsAutonomous CarsRide-sharingScootersOther TransportationFeaturesVideosExpandYouTubeTikTokInstagramPodcastsExpandDecoderThe VergecastVersion HistoryNewslettersExpandThe Verge DailyInstallerVerge DealsNotepadOptimizerRegulatorThe StepbackArchivesStoreSubscribeFacebookThreadsInstagramYoutubeRSSThe VergeThe Verge logo.How Microsoft’s developers are using AIComments DrawerCommentsLoading commentsGetting the conversation ready...TechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechMicrosoftCloseMicrosoftPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All MicrosoftNotepadCloseNotepadPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All NotepadHow Microsoft’s developers are using AIAI might not be transforming every job yet, but it’s having a big impact on developers.AI might not be transforming every job yet, but it’s having a big impact on developers.by Tom WarrenCloseTom WarrenSenior EditorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Tom WarrenNov 27, 2025, 5:00 PM UTCLinkShareImage: Cath Virginia / The VergeTom WarrenCloseTom WarrenPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Tom Warren is a senior editor and author of Notepad, who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years.Microsoft is pitching a future where AI controls everything on your PC and agents go and do work for you in the background. But before the company gets there, it has to build the tools to make these systems work and convince its own developers that AI is actually capable of achieving these big promises.Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed earlier this year that up to 30 percent of the code of “some of our projects” is written by AI, and I’ve been eager to learn exactly how Microsoft’s developers are using the technology ever since. I’ve been speaking to sources and company execs to get a better idea of how AI is being used by Microsoft developers. Some employees have told me they’re skeptical that AI agents will be able to fully replace the work of humans, leaving developers to fix the mistakes of automated agents.When I ask the company for more specifics, though, Microsoft touts its early success in deploying AI internally.“We want to really look at where there’s developer toil, where we have inefficiencies,” says Amanda Silver, a CVP in Microsoft’s CoreAI team who leads product for the company’s Apps & Agents platform, in an interview with Notepad. “Part of what we’re looking at is both how we can apply [AI] and where we can apply it.”There are over 100,000 code repositories inside Microsoft, from brand new projects to legacy codebases that are more than 20 years old and still up and running. “We have pretty much every programming language, architecture, and lifecycle stage that you can imagine, and this really reflects a lot of our customers,” says Silver. That’s a lot of code for AI to potentially touch, especially as Microsoft pushes beyond simple code completion towards more automation with AI agents.In May, Microsoft embedded a coding agent directly into GitHub Copilot, letting developers assign it work to do. The agent then goes off and creates its own development environment, runs in the background, and creates draft pull requests. “What we see is that developers save on average 30 minutes on simple tasks, over a half day on medium tasks, and two weeks on complex tasks,” says Silver. Microsoft’s developers are using it for time-consuming and monotonous tasks like fixing bugs and improving documentation for apps and services.Microsoft looks at developer hours saved, incidents mitigated, or estimated hours saved for tasks to get to these numbers. “Additionally, we look at the actions completed by the agentic capabilities, such as the number of pull-requests it contributes to,” says Silver.Measuring the impact of AI on developer productivity is something that I hear Microsoft is obsessing about internally, even if some studies show AI can make experienced developers slower. Some employees, who wish to remain anonymous, feel that Microsoft executives aren’t happy with how often developers use AI right now. There’s a push internally to get developers to use AI first for everything, but I hear that adoption isn’t always organic.“It does require a little bit of intentional engagement to allow the mindset shift to click in,” admits Silver. While Microsoft’s developers could ignore GitHub Copilot Chat because it was in a separate window, the agentic mode and coding agent are right in the context of how developers work. “It becomes habit forming and changes behavior,” says Silver.Microsoft says 91 percent of its engineering teams use GitHub Copilot, but sources have shared data that suggests, in some parts of the company, overall AI tool adoption is much lower – closer to the 51 percent of developers who told Stack Overflow they’re now using AI tools professionally every day.Silver rattles off a list of teams that have sped up their work with AI. The Xbox team used Copilot’s app modernization agent to upgrade their core Xbox service from .NET 6 to .NET 8 recently. “They saw an 88 percent reduction in manual migration effort,” she says, taking “months of work and compressing it down into days.” Microsoft’s discovery and quantum team used the Copilot agent to migrate a Java app to the latest version, and saw a similar “reduction in the effort that was needed, thanks to the AI agent auto detecting deprecated APIs, suggesting fixes, and identifying security vulnerabilities.” The company’s “ES Chat” agent, which can answer questions about Microsoft’s engineering systems, has saved engineers “46 minutes per task compared to traditional search methods.” Microsoft is also using AI agents to help Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) respond to outages of systems and apps. There, the company has already saved over “10,000 hours of operational time.”All of these time savings mean that Microsoft’s code is increasingly being built by AI instead of just humans, but Silver won’t put a number on how much of Microsoft’s code is being built by AI. She argues it’s too hard to track everything as AI is embedded in code generation, review processes, test generations, and deployment pipelines. “The agents really become a core part of the engineering system itself,” says Silver. “This is one of the reasons why it’s so hard to pin a precise number on the number of lines of code that the AI is contributing.” I also get a sense that promoting a number that’s either too high or too low would be counterproductive to Microsoft’s marketing efforts, both internally and externally.Still, I don’t doubt the complexity of the task. A human engineer could submit code while Copilot is running inside their editor, or the engineer could copy and paste AI code into their editor. It’s fair to say that AI is prevalent in some parts of Microsoft’s developer output. You only need to look at the codebases of Aspire, Typescript Go, and Microsoft’s Agent Framework to see that Copilot is a major contributor to all of them.The AI systems also aren’t perfect. Silver says engineers review their work. And a source at Microsoft told me that some of the tools aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. “ES Chat saves me time in that I don’t use it,” the person joked.Microsoft’s aggressive push towards AI agents coding for developers has also got some employees inside the company concerned about the future. I’ve spoken to engineers in Microsoft’s CoreAI division that are worried about the use of autonomous AI agents, particularly as they pick up the types of projects that junior developers could be assigned. There’s a real fear in the industry, and inside Microsoft, that junior developer roles are disappearing, leaving experienced devs having to babysit the output of AI tools.With Nadella’s goal of overhauling Microsoft into a company that’s focused on AI agents doing work, this all sounds like less humans involved in coding in the future. Silver is taking the optimistic view that AI will simply allow developers to offload the boring tasks and focus on creativity instead.“No developer got into the industry because they wanted to be assigned a months-long code maintenance migration effort,” says Silver. “They want to be at the cutting edge, they want to create, they want to innovate. These are the kinds of things they want to offload to AI so they can get back to the process of creation.”The padYou can now try the Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) on any PC, laptop, or tablet. Microsoft launched the Xbox FSE on all handheld devices last week, but it’s also started testing it on any PC, laptop, or tablet. It adds a console-like UI to the main Xbox app that appears at boot, making it ideal for a living room PC. I’m surprised to see the Xbox FSE appear on all handhelds so quickly, especially as Lenovo’s Legion Go 2 was the first handheld outside of Asus confirmed to be getting Xbox FSE in spring 2026. It feels like Microsoft is rapidly rolling out Xbox FSE to get more people using it and more bug reports. I’m sure the emergency of the Steam Machine is also a part of why it’s rolling out so quickly.Xbox Ally devices get a new game profile feature. If you’re an Xbox Ally or Xbox Ally X owner, Microsoft has started previewing its new default game profile feature this week. It automatically optimizes frame rates and power consumption across 40 games, saving you from manually tweaking game settings. The settings should help save battery life, and Microsoft says the game profile for Hollow Knight: Silksong will add nearly an hour of battery life compared to the performance mode.Microsoft is speeding up and decluttering File Explorer in Windows 11. Microsoft is making some changes to the File Explorer in Windows 11 that mean it will preload “to help improve File Explorer launch performance.” This preloading appears to be targeted at low-end systems where performance is constrained, and you’ll be able to disable it on any PC. Microsoft is also tweaking the context menus in File Explorer to remove some of the clutter and reduce the amount of space less commonly used actions take up.Notepad is getting tables. Don’t worry I’m not adding tables to the newsletter. Microsoft is now testing tables inside Windows Notepad. It’s the latest addition to the app, that takes it way beyond just a default text editor. I’m sure some people will moan that this makes Notepad “bloatware,” but the addition of tables and a full-featured Markdown editor are great improvements for my use of Notepad.Microsoft’s AI-powered copy and paste can now use on-device AI. Microsoft is upgrading its Advanced Paste tool in PowerToys so you can route requests through the company’s Foundry Local tool. You can also use the open-source Ollama, and both options will run AI models on a device’s NPU instead of from the cloud so you won’t need to purchase credits to perform some Advanced Paste features.Microsoft makes Zork open-source. The original Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III games are now available under the MIT license. Microsoft, Xbox, and Activision have teamed up to preserve the clever Z-Machine engine that powered the Zork games and allow students, teachers, and developers to study the code and learn from it. Microsoft has also worked with Jason Scott, from the Internet Archive, to grant this open-source license.Xbox Crocs are real. Microsoft has launched Xbox-themed Crocs this week, priced at $80. After releasing Windows XP-themed Crocs earlier this year, the Xbox limited edition Crocs mimic the Xbox One X’s controller. Both Xbox Crocs shoes feature the classic X, Y, B, A buttons, D-pad, left and right analog sticks, and a white Xbox button and bumpers on the sides. There’s even a $20 set of shoe charms with characters and icons from Halo, Fallout, Doom, World of Warcraft, and Sea of Thieves.Copilot is leaving WhatsApp. ChatGPT and Copilot are both disappearing from WhatsApp, thanks to Meta’s new platform policies. Copilot will remain inside WhatsApp until January 15th, 2026. If you were one of the few relying on this feature, you’ll have to switch over to the dedicated Copilot mobile app instead.Fara-7B is Microsoft’s first agentic small language model for computer use. Microsoft is building on the work of its Phi small language models by releasing Fara-7B this week. Instead of providing you with text-based responses, Fara-7B is designed to control computer interfaces and use a computer for you. It’s an experimental release for now, and Microsoft is inviting people to get an early hands-on and provide feedback before it’s released more broadly. Copilot in Edge is now a shopping assistant. Just in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Microsoft has updated its Copilot in Edge feature with a bunch of shopping assistant capabilities. Copilot in Edge now has tools like cashback, price comparison, price history, and price tracking. It works on supported retailers to provide comparisons against other retailers to make it easy to get the best price for a product.Microsoft’s AI enterprise apps get new icons, too. After rolling out new Office icons, Microsoft is now overhauling the icons for its enterprise AI apps and services. The business apps and agents all have new icons that closely match the Microsoft 365 ones, and they’re starting to appear across Microsoft’s Power Platform, Foundry, and other AI services.Claude Opus 4.5 is now rolling out to GitHub Copilot. Microsoft has been quick to adopt Anthropic’s latest Claude AI model inside GitHub Copilot this week. Early testing has shown that Opus 4.5 “surpassed internal coding benchmarks, while cutting token usage in half.” Microsoft says Anthropic’s latest model is also “great for code migration and code refactoring.”I’m always keen to hear from readers, so please drop a comment here, or you can reach me at notepad@theverge.com if you want to discuss anything else. If you’ve heard about any of Microsoft’s secret projects, you can reach me via email at notepad@theverge.com or speak to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where I’m tomwarren.01. I’m also tomwarren on Telegram, if you’d prefer to chat there.Thanks for subscribing to Notepad.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Tom WarrenCloseTom WarrenSenior EditorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Tom WarrenMicrosoftCloseMicrosoftPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All MicrosoftNotepadCloseNotepadPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All NotepadTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechMost PopularMost PopularYou can play classic Nintendo games on these custom SNES-inspired Nike sneakersWyze’s new security camera watches your yard from inside your homeI’m officially done with YouTube KidsMicrosoft’s latest 13-inch Surface Laptop is down to $549.99, a new record low priceYou’re buying a Frame TV? 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Microsoft’s developers are increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence to streamline their workflows, but the extent of this integration is still unfolding. While the company’s vision includes AI agents performing a wide range of tasks, the immediate reality is that developers are utilizing AI tools to enhance their productivity and tackle repetitive coding assignments. CVP Amanda Silver of Microsoft’s CoreAI team emphasizes a focus on “developer toil,” seeking to eliminate inefficiencies within the company’s apps and agent platform. With over 100,000 code repositories spanning diverse languages and technological stages, Microsoft estimates roughly 30% of some projects are now generated by AI.

The company’s initial deployments, particularly within GitHub Copilot, have yielded positive results. Developers using the coding agent report an average of 30 minutes saved on simple tasks, half a day on medium ones, and two weeks on more complex assignments. The agents are currently employed for tasks such as fixing bugs and refining documentation for applications and services. Microsoft tracks developer hours saved, incidents mitigated, or estimated time saved to gauge the impact of these AI tools. They monitor the actions completed by the agentic capabilities, like the number of pull requests the agent contributes to.

Microsoft’s developers are utilizing over 100,000 code repositories inside the company, from brand new projects to legacy codebases that are more than 20 years old which still are up and running. The company is actively pursuing automation, and the core AI team is observing how developers' work is impacted by the AI. Teams like Xbox have dramatically reduced migration effort from the .NET 6 framework to the .NET 8 framework by 88% in just a few days, thanks to a Copilot app modernization agent. Similarly, the discovery and quantum teams achieved a notable reduction in effort when migrating a Java application to the latest version, leveraging the AI agent to detect deprecated APIs, suggest fixes, and identify security vulnerabilities. The “ES Chat” agent, designed to answer engineering questions, has already saved engineers approximately 46 minutes per task compared to conventional search methods. Microsoft is employing these AI agents to respond to outages of systems and apps, having already saved over 10,000 hours of operational time.

This integration isn’t without its complexities. Microsoft tracks the impact of AI on developer productivity, even recognizing that, in some cases, AI might temporarily slow down experienced developers. While some employees feel executives aren't satisfied with current AI adoption rates, Silver emphasizes the need to proactively encourage developers to utilize the tools. “It does require a little bit of intentional engagement to allow the mindset shift to click in,” she admits. The AI tools are embedded into the development process, becoming a core part of the engineering system, making precise tracking of AI-generated code challenging. Despite this, the goal is clear: Microsoft intends to offload mundane tasks from developers allowing them to focus on creative endeavors. The company’s ultimate vision centers on AI agents doing work rather than human developers. Microsoft’s approach involves utilizing both AI and human collaboration to maximize productivity and innovation.