VSCode with Claude Code or GitHup Copilot

Overview: I have seen people really struggling with understanding that Claude is not GitHub Copilot (GHCP).  And GitHub Copilot is not an LLM. 

Terminology: 

Claude by Anthropic is made up of various parts, and it helps to be more specific.  Calusde is amazing at providing great Large Language Models (LLMs).  There are Claude Opus (for programming the lastest us 4.7), Claud Sonnet, and Claude Haiku.  GPT-5.4 is OpenAI's current flagship LLM.  Gemini 3.1 Pro is known for UI-focused coding. I found Gemini 3.0 good, but I don't use it that often.   

Claude also offers other services beyond supplying LLMs like Claude Code and Claude CLI.  These are the key ones for me:

Claude in Chrome — a browsing agent

Cowork — a desktop tool for non-developers to automate file and task management, rival to Microsoft 365 Copilot.

GitHub Copilot for VS Code is the equivalent of Claude Code for VS Code

Developing in VS Code:

In the screen below, I am using both Claude Code and GitHub Copilot in the VS Code IDE.

Here I have some C# code that creates and deploys an Azure Function. I can use either option until I run out of credits with my monthly (GHCP) or hourly (Claude) subscription allowance.  When I go over my GHCP allowance, I have it set up to use my Azure Credits.

GitHub Copilot (GHCP) for VS Code - Notes

I’m a big fan of using GitHub Copilot with VS Code. Right now, my preferred LLM is Claude Opus 4.5 — it’s so good.

Anyway, these are my notes and findings for using GHCP:

Custom Agents are built for a specific role or working style. You select an agent when you want Copilot to follow a particular set of instructions and use dedicated tools tailored to that job.

Agent Skills, on the other hand, are reusable capabilities. They bundle instructions, scripts, and resources that Copilot can automatically draw on whenever they’re relevant—no need for you to choose or switch anything manually.

GitHub Copilot with Claude Sonnet 4 is amazing, and GPT 5 is even better

I couldn't sleep, so I decided to build a Pulumi C# application that uses an existing MCP Server. My forms will utilise the client to allow me to access my Azure subscriptions and resources - wow.  Build a really cool tool quickly - Claude Sonnet 4 is once again significantly better than GPT-4.1 for programming with GitHub Copilot.

Update Sept 2025: I'm now using GPT-5 over Claude Sonnet with GitHub Copilot when programming in VS Code.  Both feel about the same quality to me.

GitHub have this for comparing AI models for GHCP, which is very useful.

I am using GPT-5-Codex, which "is a version of GPT-5 optimised for agentic coding in Codex".

I am also really liking GitHub Copilot code review

Anthropic's Claud 4.5 Opus is also excellent.

AI Copilot comparrison

 Lunchtime play ...  Claude.io was the best I used... Deepseek didn't work....

AI Engine Comparison Test:

I recently asked a few AI engines a complex tax query:

Perplexity Pro (paid): While I love the app, the answer was not great, 6/10

ChatGPT (free): Excellent, factually correct, not too clear in one area, 8/10 

DeepSeek: I registered and tried the search, but got the result "The server is busy. Please try again later."  I tried a few times, and it is working for common queries. However, I assume that since this logic wouldn't be cached, it can't even attempt to work with the free version, 2/10.

Bing/M365 Copilot: Got a fairly similar result to ChatGPT, missing an option and not as well laid out, 7/10 

Claud.io: Clean result that is factually correct and offers possible items that would affect the calculation, 10/10

Perplexity Pro is my default AI AI-powered search Engine on my iPhone:

Perplexity and the others are great for teaching me this (I use a homemade flip learning type approach), and here are my "follow-on" questions. However, to truly understand something, I still use books (mixed with perplexity), but nothing beats a human-written or recorded topic to give the best understanding.

My AI Posts

Copilot Studio 2025 Simple Notes

Artificial Intelligence as a mega trend

Microsoft's Copilots Explained 

Prompt Engineering with Microsoft Copilot 

AI Model Comparison (this post)

Ignite 2023 - Keynotes - big push to AI Summary