GitHub Copilot

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Exam at a Glance

GH-300 measures whether you can use GitHub Copilot effectively and responsibly: choosing the right surface, mode, or feature for a task, prompting it with the right context, understanding how it handles your data, and configuring the policies and safeguards around it. Expect to decide which Copilot surface, mode, feature, or setting fits a need, what a feature does and does not do, and who configures a policy at which level (personal, repository, organization, or enterprise).

 

What the Exam Covers

The exam has six domains. Using Copilot's features carries the most weight and responsible use comes next, while data and architecture, prompt engineering, developer productivity, and privacy safeguards each carry a smaller share. None of them is small enough to skip, so plan to cover every domain.

 

Use GitHub Copilot responsibly — 15-20%

Risks and limitations of generative AI tools, ethical and responsible AI use, potential harms and how to mitigate them, why AI output must be validated, and how to operate Copilot responsibly.

 

Use GitHub Copilot features — 25-30%

Enabling Copilot in the IDE and triggering it through inline suggestions, chat, the CLI, and agent mode, configuring content exclusions, installing and using GitHub Copilot CLI (interactively, in sessions, and to generate scripts and manage files), agent mode, Copilot Edits, MCP, agent sessions and subagents, Copilot code review, Copilot Spaces, Spark, pull request summaries, review standards in instructions files, the limits, options, feedback, and commands of Copilot Chat, reusable prompt files, organization-wide policies (including the Copilot code review policy and feature availability across IDEs and GitHub.com), audit log events, and managing subscriptions with the REST API.

 

Understand GitHub Copilot data and architecture — 10-15%

How data is used, flows, and is shared, input processing and prompt building, proxy filtering and post-processing, the code suggestion lifecycle, and the limitations of large language models and Copilot.

 

Apply prompt engineering and context crafting — 10-15%

Prompt structure and context, how Copilot determines context, zero-shot and few-shot prompting, best practices for crafting prompts, prompt engineering principles, and the prompt process flow and use of chat history.

 

Improve developer productivity with GitHub Copilot — 10-15%

Code generation, refactoring, and documentation, accelerating learning and reducing context switching, generating sample data and modernizing legacy code, unit and integration tests, edge cases and assertions, and suggesting security improvements and performance optimizations.

 

Configure privacy, content exclusions, and safeguards — 10-15%

Configuring content exclusions and editor settings, ownership and limitations of outputs, enabling the filter for suggestions matching public code, and resolving issues with suggestions and content exclusions.

 

The full bullet-level list lives in the official study guide. Treat it as your checklist. Its skills-at-a-glance list also shows a line "GitHub Copilot features (25-30%)" with no section of its own: it repeats the features domain, so the six sections above are the complete list.

The Official GH-300 Study Guide

 

How This Maps to CertiAce Practice Modules

The CertiAce question bank is organized by the fifteen modules of the official GitHub Copilot Fundamentals learning paths on Microsoft Learn (Part 1 and Part 2), so you can drill each area in isolation. CertiAce GH-300 practice questions are single-choice, multiple-select, dropdown, and yes/no table items, with no case studies. Data and architecture, organization policies, and the privacy safeguards have no module of their own in the course, so they are folded into the modules below:

GitHub Spark is named in the skills list but has no module of its own, and GitHub retired it on github.com in August 2026. Step 7 covers how to read that bullet.

 

Where GH-300 Fits

GH-300 has no prerequisite certification, and the other GitHub certifications above do not list one either. In particular, GH-600 does not require GH-300: its certification page recommends experience with coding agents including GitHub Copilot, MCP servers, and agent customization such as custom instructions, custom agents, and Copilot setup steps, which is much of what GH-300 covers. GH-900 is not required either, but the GH-300 audience profile expects familiarity with GitHub fundamentals, so GH-900 is a natural first step if you are new to GitHub. If you already use GitHub daily, go straight to GH-300.

 

Before You Start

The exam is written for people who already use GitHub and write code: its audience profile asks for familiarity with GitHub fundamentals and experience with one or more programming languages. Check yourself against this table. Anything unfamiliar is where your preparation should start:

 

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Step-by-Step Study Plan

How long you need depends on where you start. Treat these estimates as planning guidance and adjust them to your starting knowledge and weekly study hours:

 

Step 1: Read the Official Study Guide

Skim the full skills-measured list once, and mark every bullet you could not explain to a colleague. That marked-up list is your personal syllabus: everything else in this plan exists to clear it. The August 7, 2026 update made minor changes to three objective groups (Copilot in the IDE, features and capabilities, and safeguards and troubleshooting), so check any older material against the current list before relying on it. Most questions cover generally available features, but commonly used preview features may also appear.

The Official Study Guide

 

Step 2: Schedule Your Exam

Choose a realistic target date after reviewing the skills list and your available study time. A date on the calendar turns studying into a countdown, so pick one using the prep-time table above and plan backwards from it. You schedule through Pearson VUE and can take the exam online or at a test center.

The exam is offered in English, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Korean, and Japanese. If the exam is not available in your native language, check the English as a Second Language accommodation and arrange any approved extra time before booking.

Certification and Exam Details Page

Request Accommodations

 

Step 3: Work Through the Official Learning Paths

Complete both GitHub Copilot Fundamentals learning paths on Microsoft Learn, Part 1 and Part 2. The CertiAce practice modules follow the same fifteen modules. Take notes on concepts you cannot explain in simple terms, and try each feature in your own editor or repository as you go. Copilot changes faster than the training modules (the learning path overview still mentions a "GitHub Copilot Individuals" plan, while the current individual plans are Copilot Free, Copilot Student, Copilot Pro, Copilot Pro+, and Copilot Max), so when a unit and docs.github.com disagree, go with the documentation. If you prefer instructor-led training, course GH-300T00 is available on Microsoft Learn.

GitHub Copilot Fundamentals Part 1 of 2

GitHub Copilot Fundamentals Part 2 of 2

 

Step 4: Watch a Full Video Course

Microsoft Learn's GH-300 video series covers the official course in five episodes plus a short course preview, with demos of Copilot Chat, Copilot CLI, unit testing, agent mode, MCP servers, and Copilot's cloud agent. It was recorded in early 2026, before the August 2026 skills update, so it uses some older names (for example, coding agent for what GitHub now calls Copilot cloud agent). Watch it alongside or after the learning paths, and later rewatch the episodes on your weakest areas: a second pass is much faster than the first and surprisingly effective.

GH-300 Video Series (Microsoft Learn on YouTube)

 

Step 5: Get Hands-On Practice

GH-300 rewards people who use Copilot every day: the questions ask which surface, mode, or setting fits a need and what each one does and does not do. Copilot Free gives individuals limited access to a selection of Copilot features at no cost, including inline suggestions and Copilot Chat, and every plan includes Copilot CLI and the GitHub Copilot app, so a free plan supports many of the core exercises. Aim for hands-on time with:

• Enabling Copilot in your IDE, then accepting, rejecting, and steering inline suggestions with code comments
• Asking Copilot Chat to explain, refactor, document, and test code, using slash commands, chat participants, and file references to supply context
• Writing zero-shot and few-shot prompts for the same task and comparing the results
• Comparing Ask, Plan, and Agent modes on one small task, and approving or rejecting the commands agent mode proposes
• Adding a repository custom instructions file and a prompt file, and watching how responses change
• Installing Copilot CLI, using it interactively and with a single prompt, and resuming an earlier session
• Creating a Copilot Space and asking questions grounded in it, and adding an MCP server to your editor
• Reviewing your personal Copilot settings, including suggestions matching public code and whether your data may be used for model training

Some objectives need more than Copilot Free. Copilot cloud agent and third-party coding agents are available on paid Copilot plans only. Content exclusion, organization custom instructions, and organization policies need an organization on Copilot Business or Copilot Enterprise, and the Copilot audit log events and the REST API for seat management are used by organization or enterprise owners on those plans. Learn those topics from the official documentation if you cannot try them yourself.

Setting up GitHub Copilot for yourself

GitHub Skills offers free, interactive exercises that run inside GitHub repositories, including getting started with GitHub Copilot, building applications with agent mode, creating applications with Copilot CLI, integrating MCP servers, customizing Copilot with instructions and prompt files, and Copilot code review. Check each exercise's prerequisites first: the code review exercise, for example, needs a paid Copilot plan.

GitHub Skills

 

Step 6: Benchmark Your Knowledge

Use CertiAce to benchmark your readiness module by module. The practice modules map to the exam domains as shown above, so use the module mapping and the topics behind your missed questions to identify the skills-measured areas to revisit. Microsoft also offers a free official practice assessment. Aim for consistent performance across every module, not one lucky high score.

CertiAce GH-300 Exam Practice

Free Official Practice Assessment

 

Step 7: Take the Exam

The day before, review only your weak topics: no brand-new material. On exam day, read each question for what it is truly asking: many GH-300 scenarios turn on which surface the developer is working in (the IDE, Copilot Chat on GitHub.com, Copilot CLI, or the cloud agent) or on the level a setting lives at (personal, repository, organization, or enterprise), so settle those first and eliminate the options that do not fit.

Worth knowing before you sit down:

• This is a closed-book exam: Microsoft Learn access is not available on GitHub exams.
• You can take unscheduled breaks, but the clock keeps running and you cannot return to questions you already saw.
• Watch the naming: the August 2026 skills list still names GitHub Spark, which GitHub retired on github.com that same month, and older training material calls Copilot cloud agent the coding agent and mentions a Copilot Individuals plan. Learn both the outline wording and the current names, and expect the documentation to have moved on in places since the outline was published.
• Try the GitHub exam sandbox beforehand so the interface holds no surprises: GitHub Exam Sandbox

 

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Additional Learning Resources