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Using OpenAI Models in VS Code with GitHub Copilot BYOK
24 May 2026

Using OpenAI Models in VS Code with GitHub Copilot BYOK

By BEN ABT VS Code GitHub Copilot BYOK OpenAI AI 8 min reading time

GitHub Copilot’s pricing shift from flat premium request units to token-based GitHub AI Credits, scheduled for June 1, 2026, changes the economics of heavy AI usage in VS Code meaningfully. Models with large context windows, high output verbosity or intensive agent loops now have a more direct relationship between compute and cost. That makes model selection a more relevant engineering decision than it was under the older quota model.

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Using Kimi K2.5 and DeepSeek V4 in VS Code with GitHub Copilot BYOK and OpenCode
23 May 2026

Using Kimi K2.5 and DeepSeek V4 in VS Code with GitHub Copilot BYOK and OpenCode

By BEN ABT VS Code GitHub Copilot BYOK OpenCode AI DeepSeek Kimi 10 min reading time

GitHub Copilot is moving into a different cost model. GitHub announced that Copilot plans will transition from premium request units to GitHub AI Credits on June 1, 2026. Usage will be calculated from token consumption, including input, output and cached tokens, using the listed API rates for each model. This is a more direct mapping between compute usage and billing, but it also changes the economics for teams that have started to use agentic workflows heavily.

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Zero-Code REST API Mocking with json-server for Angular and React
21 May 2026

Zero-Code REST API Mocking with json-server for Angular and React

By BEN ABT Angular React Frontend Tooling Mock Rest 10 min reading time

Frontend development often hits a practical wall early: the backend API does not exist yet, is unreachable in local environments, or is shared between multiple teams and cannot be safely modified during development. The typical workarounds - hardcoded response stubs, in-memory interceptors, or hand-rolled Express servers - all impose overhead that does not belong in the development workflow.

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Cloudflare Workers with wrangler.toml: Preview URLs, production routes and SEO-safe SPA handling
10 May 2026

Cloudflare Workers with wrangler.toml: Preview URLs, production routes and SEO-safe SPA handling

By BEN ABT Cloudflare Workers Seo Devops Spa GitHub Actions 9 min reading time

Cloudflare Workers can separate production and preview traffic cleanly without sacrificing canonical URL control. For search visibility, that detail matters more than the mere existence of preview links. The production hostname stays singular, the preview hostname stays disposable, and the Worker runtime can normalize HTML paths before duplicate URLs leak into indexing.

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The new Microsoft Testing Platform for .NET: An introduction with practical samples and migration guidance
25 Mar 2026

The new Microsoft Testing Platform for .NET: An introduction with practical samples and migration guidance

By BEN ABT .NET Testing 14 min reading time

Testing in .NET has historically been associated with VSTest. That choice was reasonable for a long time because VSTest offered broad tooling support, deep IDE integration and a familiar execution model for MSTest, xUnit and NUnit projects. But the .NET ecosystem has changed. Native AOT, trimming, simplified deployment models, executable-first workflows and more explicit build-time configuration have pushed the platform toward models that do not fit particularly well with the older test infrastructure.

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GitHub Copilot - Custom Agents for Full-Stack Teams: A Practical Operating Model for .NET, React and Azure
17 Mar 2026

GitHub Copilot - Custom Agents for Full-Stack Teams: A Practical Operating Model for .NET, React and Azure

By BEN ABT GitHub Copilot Custom Agents AI Agents .NET React Azure Testing Documentation 15 min reading time

GitHub Copilot custom agents allow teams to define specialized AI assistants, each with its own role, tool access and behavioral boundaries. Instead of relying on one general-purpose assistant for everything, a team can create multiple agents that mirror the actual roles in the engineering organization. After working with custom agents for a while, the biggest insight was simple: the quality of AI-assisted engineering improves dramatically once the AI knows what role it is supposed to play.

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.NET NuGet Trusted Publishing with GitHub Actions
10 Mar 2026

.NET NuGet Trusted Publishing with GitHub Actions

By BEN ABT .NET NuGet GitHub Actions CI/CD Security 15 min reading time

Publishing NuGet packages has traditionally required one uncomfortable compromise: a long-lived API key had to exist somewhere in the delivery pipeline. Even when that secret was stored in a secure CI system, the model still relied on a credential that could be leaked, copied, mis-scoped or forgotten. Once exposed, that key could often be reused until someone noticed the incident and rotated it.

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C# 15 Unions: Unions are finally in .NET
09 Mar 2026

C# 15 Unions: Unions are finally in .NET

By BEN ABT .NET C# .NET 11 Language Design Open Source 7 min reading time

After many years of workarounds, design discussions and library-level substitutes, unions are finally becoming a first-class part of C#. The proposal in the C# language repository is no longer a distant idea. With the feature now appearing in the .NET 11 preview train as an early C# 15 capability, the direction is concrete enough to discuss in practical terms.

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Unio: High-Performance Discriminated Unions for C#
02 Mar 2026

Unio: High-Performance Discriminated Unions for C#

By BEN ABT .NET C# Open Source Performance Design Patterns 19 min reading time

C# is a powerful language, but there is one road it has not yet fully paved: native discriminated union types. Developers have been working around this absence for years, typically choosing between throwing exceptions for non-exceptional paths, returning nullable values, using out parameters or layering custom wrapper classes on top of every service boundary. Each of these approaches carries a cost - in clarity, type safety or runtime efficiency.

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.NET 11 Preview 1 Is Here: What's New and What to Expect
20 Feb 2026

.NET 11 Preview 1 Is Here: What's New and What to Expect

By BEN ABT .NET ASP.NET Core Blazor C# 9 min reading time

The .NET team just released the first preview of .NET 11 and there is already a lot to talk about. While this is an early preview - not a release candidate - the breadth of changes touching the runtime, libraries, ASP.NET Core, Blazor, C#, the SDK and Entity Framework Core gives a clear picture of where the platform is heading. Let me walk you through the most important changes you should know about.

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Agent Skills Standard: The Quality Contract Behind Reliable AI Agents
12 Feb 2026

Agent Skills Standard: The Quality Contract Behind Reliable AI Agents

By BEN ABT GitHub Copilot AI Agents Prompt Engineering GitHub 8 min reading time

Large language model agents can appear intelligent while still producing unstable output across runs, contexts and tasks. In practice, this instability is rarely caused by model quality alone. The dominant factor is often missing operational structure: no explicit boundaries, no role-specific constraints, no reusable task patterns and no agreed execution policy.

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Create a Local SQL Server Database File with .NET
09 Feb 2026

Create a Local SQL Server Database File with .NET

By BEN ABT .NET C# SQL Server LocalDB Testing 4 min reading time

Local SQL Server database files provide a pragmatic way to keep a real SQL Server engine close to the application without provisioning a full server. A LocalDB database lives in a single .mdf file (plus a log file), runs in user mode and behaves like SQL Server for most application scenarios. That makes it a strong fit for local development, integration tests and tooling that needs relational features without the overhead of infrastructure setup.

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Build a Custom FeatureGate Attribute in ASP.NET Core with C#
02 Jan 2026

Build a Custom FeatureGate Attribute in ASP.NET Core with C#

By BEN ABT ASP.NET Core C# .NET 4 min reading time

Feature management is a key technique in modern web applications, allowing you to enable or disable features dynamically without redeploying your code. In ASP.NET Core, the Microsoft.FeatureManagement library provides a robust way to implement feature flags. But what if you want to ensure that administrators can always access certain features, even if those features are disabled for regular users?

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