What you'll learn

The GitHub Copilot CLI is great at reasoning about the code on your machine, but most real engineering problems also depend on data the AI can't see: your internal APIs, your team's documentation, your issue tracker, and the systems your organization runs on.

In this course, GitHub Copilot CLI: Working with External APIs and Data, you'll gain the ability to extend the Copilot CLI with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) so it can pull real-time data from internal and external sources.

First, you'll explore what MCP is, how it fits into the Copilot CLI, and why it has quickly become the standard for connecting AI assistants to tools and data.

Next, you'll discover how to configure and manage existing MCP servers, including the official GitHub and Microsoft Learn servers, to enrich your prompts with live repository, issue, and documentation data.

Finally, you'll learn how to build and integrate a custom MCP server that exposes a proprietary API or data source the built-in tools don't cover.

When you're finished with this course, you'll have the skills and knowledge of MCP and the Copilot CLI needed to turn your terminal into a context-aware expert that understands your codebase, your APIs, and your organization's data.