Microsoft moves Copilot agent runtime to Rust for fast startup and low memory
martinwoodward · x · 2026-09-17
Microsoft's martin woodward explains why the Copilot agent runtime is moving to Rust: the original harness came from the web coding agent powering GitHub Copilot and code review, later spread to Copilot CLI, and is now expanding across all Copilots. The CLI/Web-oriented architecture doesn't fit surfaces like Excel, Outlook, and Copilot Cowork, so the team is building a common runtime with fast startup, low memory overhead, minimal dependencies, and strong interop and security properties.
Related event: GitHub Rewrote Its Copilot Runtime in 800K Lines of Rust Using Copilot(10 posts)→
More from coding & agent
- Dev builds 3D universe explorer with 20 galaxies, 767 planets using Codex GPT-6.1 Sol — OpenAIDevs · 2026-11-02
- ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity's fetchers don't run JavaScript, leaving client-rendered sites invisible to AI — gaganghotra_ · 2026-11-02
- SGLang boosts multimodal inference >10% by replacing GPU memory bookkeeping with a dict lookup — charles_irl · 2026-11-02
- kivi: hold Fn, talk, and it types polished text anywhere on your Mac — itsOmSarraf_ · 2026-11-02
- A base LLM plus 11 lines of code is all you need for a decision model — helloiamleonie · 2026-11-02
- Fix codebase structure before asking AI agents to write tests, says engineer — arpit_bhayani · 2026-11-02