PartialCoding
Assign issues to a cloud coding agent in a major OSS repo for 10 months
Tools: GitHub Copilot coding agent
Setup, access, approval gate, failure notes
- Setup / prompt
- Maintainers explicitly assign issues; agent opens PRs for review.
- Access required
- Repo PRs only; cannot open PRs on its own
- HITL checkpoint
- Maintainer must request each PR and review before merge
- Outcome & failure notes
- 878 PRs, 535 merged (67.9% vs 87.1% for Microsoft humans), ~95k lines added. Strongest at cleanup and tests, weaker at performance work. Early public PRs drew ridicule and the review burden is real.
- Evidence type
- Maintainer retrospective
Source: .NET Blog (Stephen Toub) · 2026-03 · Checked 2026-10-19