Flight School

Train with your Copilot. Reach new heights.

Flight School is a sample implementation showing how to build AI-powered developer tools using the GitHub Copilot SDK. It's a learning platform where developers practice coding challenges, receive real-time AI evaluation, and get personalized guidance all powered by GitHub Copilot.

Getting Started

The fastest way to run Flight School is with GitHub Codespaces — everything is pre-configured:

1. Click Code → Codespaces → Create codespace on main
2. Wait for setup to complete (installs dependencies and tools automatically)
3. Run gh auth login to authenticate with GitHub
4. Run npm run dev to start the app

That's it! Open the preview URL and you're ready to go.

Running Locally

To run Flight School on your own machine, you'll need:

• Node.js 22+ — Download here
• GitHub CLI — Installation guide
• GitHub Copilot CLI — Required for AI features
• GitHub Copilot access — Individual, Business, or Enterprise subscription

Step 1: Install and authenticate GitHub CLI

# Install GitHub CLI (if not already installed)
# macOS
brew install gh

# Windows
winget install GitHub.cli

# Then authenticate
gh auth login

Step 2: Install GitHub Copilot CLI extension

The Copilot SDK uses the Copilot CLI for AI features. Install it as a GitHub CLI extension:

gh extension install github/gh-copilot

Step 3: Clone and run

git clone https://github.com/chrisreddington/flight-school.git
cd flight-school
npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000 — you should see your GitHub profile loaded automatically.

Alternative: Using a Personal Access Token

If you prefer not to use the GitHub CLI, you can authenticate with a Personal Access Token (PAT):

1. Go to GitHub Settings → Developer settings → Personal access tokens → Tokens (classic)
2. Click Generate new token (classic)
3. Select these scopes:
   • repo — Access your repositories
   • read:user — Read your profile information
   • read:org — Read organization membership (optional)
4. Create a .env.local file in the project root:

GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_your_token_here

Note: You'll still need the GitHub Copilot CLI installed for AI-powered features like challenges, hints, and coaching. The token only handles GitHub API access for profile and repository data.

Vision

AI can be a learning partner, not just a tool that helps generate solutions. Flight School explores how the Copilot SDK can create educational experiences that adapt to each developer's existing experience, their skill level, provide constructive feedback, and guide learners toward understanding.

What It Does

Flight School gathers data from your GitHub profile and repositories through the Octokit package and uses the Copilot SDK to tailor a personalized learning experience:

• Daily Focus — A challenge, goal, and learning topics tailored to your skill gaps
• Interactive Challenges — Practice in a sandbox with real-time AI evaluation
• Progressive Hints — Get guidance without spoilers when you're stuck
• Learning Conversations — Chat with an AI coach about your code and repositories

flowchart LR
    subgraph Flight School
        A[GitHub Profile<br>& Repos] --> B[Copilot SDK<br>+ MCP Tools]
        B --> C[Your Learning<br>Dashboard]
        B --> D[AI-Powered:<br>• Evaluation<br>• Hints<br>• Coaching<br>• Focus Gen]
    end

Loading

How It Uses the Copilot SDK

Flight School demonstrates several Copilot SDK patterns that you can adapt for your own applications:

Session Management

The SDK's CopilotClient manages authenticated sessions. To optimize performance, Flight School creates different session types for different use cases:

• Lightweight sessions for fast responses (hints, quick chats)
• MCP-enabled sessions when GitHub exploration is needed (repo search, file contents, etc.)
• Conversation caching for multi-turn chats that maintain context

MCP Tool Integration

Flight School connects to GitHub's Remote MCP Server, giving the AI access to GitHub tools like get_me, list_user_repositories, and search_code. This enables context-aware responses based on your actual repositories in the chat experience.

Streaming Responses

The chat and challenge evaluation experiences stream feedback in real-time using the SDK's streaming mode, showing results as they're generated rather than waiting for the full response.

Available Commands

Command	Description
npm run dev	Start development server
npm run build	Create production build
npm run lint	Run ESLint
npm test	Run tests
npm run test:watch	Run tests in watch mode

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Flight School is both a learning platform and a reference implementation. Improving either helps the community.

Ways to Contribute

• Report bugs — Open an issue with reproduction steps
• Suggest features — Describe your use case in an issue
• Improve documentation — Help others understand the SDK patterns
• Submit code — Fix bugs or implement features

Development Workflow

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (feature/your-feature-name)
3. Make your changes with clear commits
4. Run tests (npm test) and linting (npm run lint)
5. Open a Pull Request

See CONTRIBUTING.md for commit conventions, testing practices, and code review process.

Local Data Storage

Flight School stores your data outside the repository in your user data directory to prevent accidental commits:

Platform	Location
Linux/macOS	~/.local/share/flight-school/
Windows	%LOCALAPPDATA%\flight-school\
Custom	Set FLIGHT_SCHOOL_DATA_DIR environment variable

What's Stored

File	Contents
profile-cache.json	Cached GitHub profile (username, avatar, bio, repos)
focus-storage.json	Daily challenges, goals, learning topics, completion states
habits.json	Your custom learning habits and progress tracking
threads.json	Chat conversation history with the AI coach
workspaces/{id}/	Challenge solution code and metadata

Storage Structure

~/.local/share/flight-school/    # or %LOCALAPPDATA%\flight-school\ on Windows
├── profile-cache.json           # GitHub profile cache
├── focus-storage.json           # Daily focus content + state
├── habits.json                  # Learning habits
├── threads.json                 # Chat history
└── workspaces/                  # Challenge workspaces
    └── {challengeId}/
        ├── _workspace.json      # Metadata
        └── solution.ts          # Your code files

• Chat history may contain sensitive info based on whatever you discuss with the AI coach.
• Workspace files contain your actual solution code for challenges.

Precautions

1. Back up before clearing — Delete the data folder to reset all local state

Tech Stack

• Framework: Next.js with App Router
• UI: GitHub Primer React Components
• AI: GitHub Copilot SDK with MCP tool integration
• Data: Octokit for GitHub API access
• Storage: Local JSON files in user data directory (see above)
• Testing: Vitest

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License—see the LICENSE file for details.