GitHub Copilot app modernization FAQ

Currently, GitHub Copilot app modernization helps you upgrade your .NET (.NET, .NET Core, and .NET Framework) projects to newer versions of .NET. It also helps migrate services to Azure. It also upgrades dependencies and fixes errors in the code post-migration. The agent performs the following steps in a GitHub Copilot chat session:

• Analyzes your projects and proposes an modernization plan.
• According to the plan, runs a series of tasks to modernize your projects.
• Operates in a working branch under a local Git repository.
• Automatically fixes issues during the code transformation.
• Reports progress and allow access to code changes & logs.
• Learns from the interactive experience with you (within the context of the session) to improve subsequent transformations.

• Only Git repositories are supported.
• There's no guarantee that the upgrade or migration suggestions are considered best practices.
• The LLM doesn't persist learning from the upgrade. Meaning, code fixes and corrections you provide during the upgrade process don't persist and can't be remembered for future upgrades.
• It only runs on Windows.

You should use a good coding model, such as Claude Sonnet 4.0 or Claude Sonnet 3.7.

No. Unlike traditional AI tools where you might enter freeform prompts, the agent operates in a more structured way. The AI is embedded within the build-and-fix process, meaning the prompts it uses are predefined and tied to the upgrade plan. So it's not something you can train on your codebase, and it's not something you can manually steer with custom instructions, beyond the changes you can make to the plan Markdown file.

However, the agent does have some adaptability within a session. If you manually adjust a fix, it learns from that interaction in the short term and applies similar corrections if it encounters the same issue again. Think of it as refining its approach within the scope of that upgrade.

The agent never stores a user's codebase and never uses your code for training the model. Once an upgrade or migration is complete, session data is deleted.

Yes! Use the Suggest a feature and Report a Problem features of in Visual Studio to provide feedback.

The agent only collects telemetry information about project types, intent to upgrade, and upgrade duration. The data is aggregated through Visual Studio itself and doesn't contain any user-identifiable information. For more information about Microsoft's privacy policy, see Visual Studio Customer Experience Improvement Program.

Yes, you can disable telemetry. In Visual Studio, select Help > Privacy > Privacy Settings > "No, I would not like to participate."

GitHub Copilot app modernization helps you upgrade your .NET projects or migrate them to Azure. Besides upgrading the target framework, the agent can work with the following types of projects:

• Azure Functions.
• Console apps and class libraries.
• Web technologies such as:
  • MVC
  • Blazor
  • Razor Pages
  • Web API
• Desktop technologies such as Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation.
• Test projects such as MSTest and NUnit.
• .NET Framework projects.

The agent can assist in migrating and deploying your .NET applications to Azure, including:

• Web apps
• API apps
• Azure Functions
• Containerized applications

The migration scenarios include:

• Modernizing databases
• Storage
• Identity
• Messaging
• Event streaming
• Email
• Logging
• Security

For more information about these scenarios, see Predefined tasks for migration.

Yes, you can monitor the progress of the assessment through the Visual Studio interface. The agent provides real-time feedback and updates on the status of the migration process.

While the assessment is running, you can monitor its progress by viewing the command-line output:

1. In Visual Studio, go to View > Output to open the Output window.
2. In the Output window, find the Show output from: dropdown.
3. Select AppModernizationExtension from the dropdown list.
4. The command-line output from the assessment tool appears here, showing real-time progress.

You can also access the Output window using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+O.

Related content

To learn more, see What is GitHub Copilot app modernization?.