AI‐enabled Codespace

AI-enabled Codespace

The AI-enabled devcontainer profile provides a Codespace pre-configured with AI CLI tooling on top of the standard Fluid Framework development environment.

Creating the Codespace

1. Go to the repository on GitHub and open the Create codespace flow. Don't just click the + button - that will use the Standard codespace image. Instead, create a custom codespace. Eventually this image will replace the Standard image.
2. Choose your branch.
3. Expand Dev container configuration and select AI-enabled. The profile defaults to 32 CPUs / 64 GB RAM.
4. Create the Codespace.

First-time authentication

After creating a new AI-enabled Codespace, you may be prompted to authenticate up to a dozen times. A dozen is not a typo. This is excessive but expected — just keep clicking through each prompt until they stop.

Differences from the Standard profile

The AI-enabled profile includes everything in the Standard profile, plus:

Addition	Purpose
Agency CLI	Run AI agents (Claude, GitHub Copilot) from the terminal.
Repoverlay	Overlay system that adds context files (agents, skills) to the workspace.
GitHub CLI (gh)	Pre-installed for PR workflows and gh codespace ssh.
SSH daemon	Enables gh codespace ssh access so you can connect from a local terminal.
ADO Codespaces Auth extension	Authenticate to Azure DevOps from within the Codespace.
Agent aliases	Shell aliases for common AI commands (see below).
Higher compute defaults	32 CPUs / 64 GB RAM vs. 16 CPUs / 64 GB RAM for Standard.

Installing Agency manually

The automated agency install during container build does not work yet. Run this command manually after your Codespace starts:

pnpm install:agency

Agency is added to your PATH automatically in all shell sessions once installed.

Agent aliases

The AI-enabled profile installs shell aliases that are available in every terminal session. All aliases route through agency.

If you're not sure what to use, try copilot-ado for feature work.

Claude aliases

Alias	Command	Purpose
claude	agency claude	Start Claude Code with the default model.
haiku	agency claude --model haiku	Start Claude Code with the Haiku model (fastest, cheapest).
sonnet	agency claude --model sonnet	Start Claude Code with the Sonnet model (balanced).
opus	agency claude --model opus	Start Claude Code with the Opus model (most capable).

Copilot aliases

Alias	Command	Purpose
copilot	agency copilot	Start GitHub Copilot in the terminal.
copilot-ado	agency copilot --mcp 'ado --org fluidframework'	Copilot with the Azure DevOps MCP server connected to the fluidframework org.
copilot-kusto	agency copilot --mcp 'kusto --service-uri https://kusto.aria.microsoft.com'	Copilot with the Kusto MCP server for telemetry queries.
copilot-oce	repoverlay switch ff-oce && copilot-kusto	Switch to the ff-oce overlay, then start Copilot with Kusto. Designed for OCE (On-Call Engineer) workflows.
copilot-work	agency copilot --mcp 'workiq'	Copilot with the WorkIQ MCP server.

Connecting via SSH

You can connect to a running AI-enabled Codespace from your local terminal using the GitHub CLI:

gh codespace ssh

This is useful for running AI agents from your local terminal while the Codespace provides the compute and repository context.