GitHub Copilot AI Code Review in Visual Studio 2026
Can GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio 2026 perform a serious AI code review on a real-world .NET project?
In this video, I use GitHub Copilot to analyze and review a legacy .NET application written in 2013, and then compare that review with a completely rewritten modern version of the same project.
The goal is to see how useful *AI-powered code reviews* really are when modernizing legacy software.
But there’s a catch…
Simply asking Copilot to “review the code” often produces **polite, incomplete, and sometimes misleading results**. To get a truly useful review, the AI needs **structure, guidelines, and a scoring framework**.
In this episode, I show how a *custom code review scorecard* dramatically improves the quality of AI feedback.
---
⏱️ TIME STAMPS
00:00 – Reviews Are Tricky
02:20 – Simple Un-Guided Review
03:21 – Target Scorecard Approach
05:24 – Detailed Review with Custom Guidelines
06:51 – Reviewing the Updated Codebase
09:17 – Conclusion & Key Takeaways
---
🔎 What You’ll Learn in This Video
1️⃣ The Problem with Simple AI Code Reviews
When you ask *GitHub Copilot* to perform a generic review:
Architectural issues may be missed
Team conventions are unknown
AI tends to be overly polite
Code quality scores can become inflated
This can lead to **misleading conclusions about the health of a codebase**.
---
2️⃣ Reviewing a Legacy .NET Codebase
The original 2013 project contained several major issues:
Heavy use of *static classes*
Thin pass-through services
*Mixed domain logic and data access*
No meaningful automated tests
*No clear architecture*
Using a structured **AI code review scorecard**, Copilot produced a brutal but honest result:
*15 / 100 — Technical Bankruptcy*
Recommendation:
Do *not attempt incremental fixes*
Perform a *complete rewrite*
Use the old system as reference only
---
3️⃣ Structured AI Code Reviews with Scorecards
To improve the quality of the review, Copilot was given:
A *Markdown scorecard*
*Weighted development categories*
A predefined *solution architecture template*
Clear development standards
Example weighting:
Programming quality – 15%
Testing – 20%
Architecture – heavily weighted
This forces the AI to evaluate the project **in a much more structured way**.
---
4️⃣ Reviewing the Modern Rewritten Application
After rewriting the application using modern practices and *GitHub Copilot assistance**, I ran the **same structured review* on the updated codebase.
The result:
Major architectural improvements
Proper project separation
Better maintainability
Refactoring roadmap
Estimated improvement timeline
One interesting observation:
AI reviews are **not deterministic**.
Even when using the same prompt and scorecard, results can vary.
---
🎯 Key Takeaways
AI code reviews need *clear guidelines*
Simple prompts often *inflate results*
Scorecards dramatically improve feedback quality
Architecture must be evaluated explicitly
AI tends to avoid being overly critical
Running the same review twice may produce *different outputs*
If you want **serious AI-assisted code reviews using GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio 2026**, you need more than a simple prompt — you need a **review framework**.
---
👉 *Watch this video as part of the full series (recommended):*
[ • GitHub Copilot AI Code Review in Visual St... ]( • GitHub Copilot AI Code Review in Visual St... )
---
📚 Watch the Full Series
📹 *Episode 1:* GitHub Copilot AI Code Review – Can AI Understand Legacy .NET Code?
[ • GitHub Copilot AI Code Review – Can AI Und... ]( • GitHub Copilot AI Code Review – Can AI Und... )
📹 *Episode 2:* Creating .NET Projects and Solution Structure
[ • GitHub Copilot Visual Studio 2026 | Creati... ]( • GitHub Copilot Visual Studio 2026 | Creati... )
📹 *Episode 3:* Legacy Code Rewrite – Random Number Generator
[ • Refactoring Legacy Code with GitHub Copilo... ]( • Refactoring Legacy Code with GitHub Copilo... )
📹 *Episode 4:* Working Without Agent Skills in Visual Studio 2026
[ • GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio 2026 – Wor... ]( • GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio 2026 – Wor... )
📹 *Episode 5:* Vibe Coding Razor Pages
[ • GitHub Copilot Agent Mode: Vibe Coding ASP... ]( • GitHub Copilot Agent Mode: Vibe Coding ASP... )
➡️ *Episode 6:* Code Review (This Video)
[ • GitHub Copilot AI Code Review in Visual St... ]( • GitHub Copilot AI Code Review in Visual St... )
---
💻 GitHub Repository
[https://github.com/mpholoane-bapela/l...](https://github.com/mpholoane-bapela/l...)
---
#githubcopilot #aicoding #softwaredevelopment #dotnet
On this page of the site you can watch the video online GitHub Copilot AI Code Review in Visual Studio 2026 with a duration of hours minute second in good quality, which was uploaded by the user Codeless Developer 17 March 2026, share the link with friends and acquaintances, this video has already been watched 521 times on youtube and it was liked by 7 viewers. Enjoy your viewing!
