Training course · GitHub Copilot · Go

GitHub Copilot for Go Developers

Use GitHub Copilot professionally: completions, chat, agent mode, the coding agent for issues and PRs, code review and enterprise policies.

Duration
2 days (14 hrs)
Format
Online or on-site
Language
German or English
Participants
open dates or exclusive for your team
Certificate
Certificate of attendance

Overview

This course connects GitHub Copilot with the everyday processes of Go. Participants work on realistic scenarios and leave with prompts, workflows and checklists they can use straight away.

GitHub Copilot has grown from simple code completion into a broad AI platform that supports the entire development lifecycle. In the editor you work with inline suggestions, next edit suggestions and Copilot Chat; in agent mode Copilot handles tasks across multiple files and runs commands. On GitHub itself, the coding agent picks up assigned issues and delivers pull requests. In this two-day course you will learn how to use each of these building blocks deliberately and fit them cleanly into your existing development process.

Beyond hands-on editor work, the course covers control and quality. Custom instructions and prompt files give Copilot the project knowledge it needs, MCP adds further tools, and Copilot code review complements human reviewers. For those responsible for teams and organisations, we look at policies at organisation and enterprise level, content exclusions, model availability and usage reporting. Together, these lay the groundwork for a secure, transparent and genuinely effective Copilot rollout across the entire company.

Go is the language behind many cloud-native tools, microservices, CLIs and infrastructure components. Its strengths are simplicity, fast compilation and built-in concurrency – yet goroutines, channels, context handling and error handling all demand discipline. AI coding assistants and agents suit Go particularly well: the compiler, go vet and the race detector provide fast, unambiguous feedback that agents can iterate on. Typical tasks include table-driven tests, gRPC and HTTP handlers generated from specifications, tracking down race conditions or goroutine leaks and refactoring towards clean interfaces. This course shows you how to get idiomatic Go from AI and how to verify the results with Go’s own tooling.

The course is delivered live – either online in a virtual classroom or on-site in our training rooms in Munich, Salzburg, Berlin, Augsburg, Hanover, Bremen, Stuttgart and Kaiserslautern. We can also run it exclusively for your team.

Who is this course for?

  • Go developers in back-end and platform teams
  • Developers of cloud-native tools, operators and CLIs
  • Site reliability engineers maintaining their own Go code
  • Software architects designing high-performance microservices

Typical challenges we address

  • Subtle concurrency bugs such as race conditions, deadlocks and goroutine leaks
  • Repetitive boilerplate in error handling, handlers and tests
  • Inconsistent project layouts and interface boundaries in growing codebases
  • Difficult performance analysis of memory allocations and latency

What you will be able to do

  • You use Copilot completions, chat and agent mode purposefully for your everyday development tasks.
  • You capture project knowledge in custom instructions and prompt files to improve output quality.
  • You delegate suitable issues to the coding agent and review its pull requests properly.
  • You integrate Copilot code review sensibly into your existing review process.
  • Have AI agents produce idiomatic Go code, tests and services that follow Go conventions.
  • Use AI deliberately to analyse concurrency and performance problems.
  • Verify generated code with the compiler, go vet, the race detector, linting and benchmarks.

Course outline

Day 1

Module 1 Copilot in the editor: completions and chat
  • Accepting, rejecting and steering inline and next edit suggestions efficiently
  • Using Copilot Chat for explanations, debugging and test generation
  • Setting context precisely with files, selections, workspace and chat variables
  • Model selection and differences between VS Code, Visual Studio and JetBrains IDEs
Module 2 Agent mode and extensions
  • Planning multi-step tasks in agent mode and executing them under control
  • Feeding terminal commands, test runs and error output into the agent loop
  • Connecting MCP servers for additional tools and data sources
  • Reviewing changes, accepting them partially or rolling them back
Module 3 Project knowledge through custom instructions
  • Writing repository-wide instructions on architecture, style and testing
  • Creating path-specific instructions and reusable prompt files
  • Combining personal and organisation-wide guidance sensibly
  • Refining instructions continuously based on output quality
Module 4 Coding agent and code review on GitHub
  • Writing issues the coding agent can implement reliably
  • Reviewing, commenting on and iterating over the agent’s pull requests
  • Using Copilot code review as an additional check in the PR process
  • Configuring the agent’s development environment with setup steps and Actions

Day 2

Module 5 Administration, policies and security
  • Licence assignment and policies at organisation and enterprise level
  • Content exclusions, model availability and public code filters
  • Using audit logs and usage metrics to steer adoption
  • Clarifying security risks, secrets and accountability for AI-generated code
Module 6 Practice lab: Go
  • Writing table-driven tests
  • Implementing gRPC and HTTP services
  • Finding concurrency bugs
  • Idiomatic refactoring
  • Profiling performance
  • Building CLIs and tools
Module 7 Data protection, quality & transfer to daily work
  • Go tooling often runs deep in the infrastructure, so keep kubeconfigs, tokens and certificates strictly out of an AI assistant’s context. Check new modules for provenance, licence and known vulnerabilities, for instance with govulncheck, and record dependencies in an SBOM as required under the Cyber Resilience Act for products with digital elements.
  • Ground rules for safe AI use in your team
  • Checking results: facts, sources, tests and the four-eyes principle
  • Personal action plan for the next 30 days
  • Open questions, outlook and resources for further learning

Practical scenarios from your field

Writing table-driven tests

The agent generates idiomatic table-driven tests with subtests, test helpers and fakes for interfaces, runs go test with the race detector and adds missing edge cases until coverage is where you want it.

Implementing gRPC and HTTP services

Protobuf definitions or OpenAPI specs become handlers, middleware for logging and authentication, context propagation with timeouts and clean error returns. Integration tests exercise the endpoints against realistic requests and failure cases.

Finding concurrency bugs

The AI analyses race detector output, goroutine dumps and code using channels or mutexes, explains the cause of deadlocks or leaks and proposes fixes using errgroup or context cancellation.

Idiomatic refactoring

Large packages are untangled, small consumer-side interfaces introduced, errors wrapped and checked with errors.Is, and code aligned with golangci-lint rules. Existing tests keep behaviour safe throughout.

Profiling performance

pprof profiles and benchmark results are interpreted, hotspots and unnecessary allocations identified, and optimisations backed by before-and-after benchmarks. Improvements become measurable rather than merely assumed.

Building CLIs and tools

The assistant creates command-line tools with Cobra or the standard library, including configuration, structured logging, cross-compilation and release automation. Tests, help texts and clear command documentation are included.

Possible hands-on projects

Health check aggregator

A Go service that polls the health endpoints of many services concurrently, merges the results and exposes them as JSON and Prometheus metrics.

Log shipper CLI

A lean command-line tool that tails log files, filters entries and ships them in batches to an HTTP endpoint – with backoff and graceful shutdown.

Kubernetes resource report

A CLI built on client-go that reads resource requests and limits across all deployments and presents anomalies in a clear table.

Prerequisites

You develop software regularly, work with Git and GitHub issues and pull requests, and use a modern IDE. Hands-on Go experience including goroutines, interfaces and modules, plus a working knowledge of Git and containers.

Technical requirements

Your own laptop with VS Code or a JetBrains IDE, the Copilot extension installed and a GitHub account with an active Copilot licence; the coding agent requires a suitable plan.

Data protection & compliance

Go tooling often runs deep in the infrastructure, so keep kubeconfigs, tokens and certificates strictly out of an AI assistant’s context. Check new modules for provenance, licence and known vulnerabilities, for instance with govulncheck, and record dependencies in an SBOM as required under the Cyber Resilience Act for products with digital elements.

Suggested dates

All dates are suggestions – your preferred date is always possible.

  • Wed, 25 November 2026 – Thu, 26 November 2026 Online Request
  • Thu, 10 December 2026 – Fri, 11 December 2026 Salzburg Request
  • Wed, 16 December 2026 – Thu, 17 December 2026 Online Request
  • Thu, 7 January 2027 – Fri, 8 January 2027 Online Request
  • Tue, 19 January 2027 – Wed, 20 January 2027 Bremen Request
  • Mon, 25 January 2027 – Tue, 26 January 2027 Online Request

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between agent mode and the coding agent?

Agent mode runs inside your IDE: you work interactively with Copilot, see every step and approve commands. The coding agent, by contrast, works autonomously on GitHub once you assign it an issue, uses its own execution environment and opens a pull request that you then review just as you would a contribution from a colleague.

How can we make sure Copilot complies with our company policies?

At organisation and enterprise level you can enable or block specific features, models and extensions. Content exclusions keep sensitive files out of the context, and audit logs make usage traceable. During the course we show how to align these controls with data protection, information security requirements and your internal coding standards.

Is the course worthwhile if we already use Copilot?

Yes, especially then. Many teams rely on completions alone and barely touch chat, agent mode, custom instructions or the coding agent. The course shows how to use these features in a structured way, improve results with project knowledge and avoid common pitfalls. Experienced users benefit most from the sections on review and governance.

Does AI really write idiomatic Go?

With good context, yes. Without guidance, models sometimes drift towards patterns from other languages, such as large interfaces or excessive abstraction. On the course you capture your Go conventions, linter configuration and example code so the assistant favours simple, idiomatic solutions, and you verify the output with golangci-lint.

Can AI reliably detect race conditions?

AI is a powerful analysis aid but no substitute for the race detector. The combination works best: the agent runs tests with the race detector, interprets the reports and proposes fixes. You learn to set up that loop and to critically assess any suggested synchronisation changes before accepting them.

How much does “GitHub Copilot for Go Developers” cost?

The course costs a flat €949 plus VAT per participant – whether online or on-site. This includes 2 training day(s) with a live trainer, course materials, a lab environment and a certificate of attendance.

Can I suggest my own date?

Yes. Our suggested dates are just a guide. In the request form you can always describe your preferred date or period in free text – we check availability and confirm within one working day.

Is the course online or on-site?

Both are possible: live online in a virtual classroom or on-site in Munich, Salzburg, Berlin, Augsburg, Hanover, Bremen, Stuttgart or Kaiserslautern. We can also run the course exclusively for your team.

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