Agents now open 40% of pull requests on GitHub, and Copilot picks its own models
GitHub's annual Octoverse report, published at its Universe conference Wednesday, says more than 40% of pull requests were started by an draft in September, up from 17% in March, or 110 million in that month alone. GitHub calls its count a floor because it cannot detect every agent. Across the 12 months to September 30th, developers pushed 17.9 billion times, more than 2024 and 2025 combined.
GitHub also made Copilot Fusion . A developer picks an effort level and Fusion decides which model, or which combination, handles each step: a cheap model that escalates when stuck, or one model drafting while another reviews. GitHub says Fusion Max scored within two points of Claude Code on Opus 5.5 Max on Artificial Analysis's Coding Agent Index at about half the cost per task. Those are vendor-run numbers. Enterprise customers can now use every Copilot feature without a seat subscription and pay for the AI credits they use. SourcesABB
Sources
- ARoute and orchestrate models with GitHub Copilot Fusion (GitHub Changelog)github.blog
- BGitHub Universe: Copilot Fusion and Octoverse (The Next Web)thenextweb.com
- BGitHub debuts Copilot Fusion (The New Stack)thenewstack.io
This story ran in the Morning Brief of October 29th 2026.