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The following blog post was written with the help of AI.

I figured I’d start with something I’ve been chewing on myself for a while: my switch from GitHub Copilot to Claude Code.

Why I started with GitHub Copilot

When we first had to choose an AI tool for development, we landed on GitHub Copilot. There were two main reasons for that:

  1. It made sense organizationally. We already had a GitHub subscription and active Microsoft licenses in-house, and everything sat within the same tenant. That made security, governance, and all the practical stuff pretty straightforward from the start.
  2. It was easy to get started. It didn’t require an extra subscription somewhere else, or a bunch of additional setup and approvals. It was simply the fastest and least complicated path forward.

Another thing that made Copilot an easy choice was the pricing model. Many of the other AI solutions were already consumption-based back then, which just makes it a bit harder to roll out broadly without first having to think too much about budget, usage, and governance. Copilot wasn’t consumption-based in the same way at that point, so it was simply easier to say: let’s get started and gain some experience with it.

Copilot was the pragmatic choice for me. Not necessarily because I thought it was the technically strongest tool, but because it fit well into the setup we already had.

The turning point

Things really started to change when Copilot switched to consumption-based pricing. It made me think: is Copilot still the right choice, or is it now worth taking a more serious look at alternatives like Claude?

I’d actually been sitting with the thought for a while. Copilot still has the big advantage of fitting easily into our existing setup. But when the pricing model changes, and there’s a tool out there that feels stronger for day-to-day development work, it’s hard not to take that seriously.

Two things in particular ended up weighing heavily for me.

The first is that Claude Code can work directly on my own machine. It can navigate the file system, use the command line, and work with the tools I already use daily. It simply fits the way I work better. Instead of everything feeling tied to the editor or a cloud context, the AI can actually help right where the work happens.

The second thing is skills. I think Claude’s skills concept works really well and is a stronger overall package. Copilot could do it too, but it “requires more.”

So I’m taking the leap

So the conclusion is that I’m now taking the leap and getting started with Claude Code. And as a somewhat fitting start, this blog itself was also set up with help from Claude Code — repository, Jekyll structure, all of it.

So yeah — here we go 🙂

I expect to write more about the experience along the way. Both what works really well, and what takes a bit of getting used to when coming from Copilot and starting to work with Claude Code instead.

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