// Videos

With the plan approved, ToolSmith starts building, and the first thing it needs is a connection to PurpleSuite. The sixth video in the Build EmployeeWorks plugins with ToolSmith series enters the API key and instance ID in a secure configuration form (never in chat), follows a failed test through to an updated plan, then checks what ToolSmith created against that plan.

ToolSmith proposes a plan before it builds anything, so the plan is where you catch mistakes. The fifth video in the Build EmployeeWorks plugins with ToolSmith series describes the booking cancellation task to ToolSmith, then reviews the plan it proposes, including how the plugin authenticates to PurpleSuite and whose bookings it finds.

You don't want to test a booking cancellation plugin against someone's real trip. The fourth video in the Build EmployeeWorks plugins with ToolSmith series introduces PurpleSuite, an enterprise app simulator, and shows how to create an instance, find the bookings and API operations in Purple Expense, and collect the credentials ToolSmith will need.

Before ToolSmith builds a plugin for you, it helps to know how plugins are put together so you can review its plan. The third video in the Build EmployeeWorks plugins with ToolSmith series walks through a plugin's assets in Tool Studio (connector, HTTP actions, conversational process and the plugin itself), then follows an employee's request through all of them.

EmployeeWorks assistants can use Enterprise Search, MCP servers and plugins as tools. The second video in the Build EmployeeWorks plugins with ToolSmith series explains how tools and the agentic loop let a language model act, then when to reach for each option: Enterprise Search for company knowledge, MCP servers for an open standard set of tools, and plugins for tasks that have to run the same way every time.

An AI assistant is only as useful as the tools you give it. The first video in the Build EmployeeWorks plugins with ToolSmith series covers the groundwork: the problem employees face moving between systems to get something done, and how EmployeeWorks gives them one place to search company knowledge and take action across the systems they already use.

Chris Reddington demonstrates "Flight School," a custom Next.js application built to personalize his learning journey using the GitHub Copilot SDK. See how he leverages agentic workflows to generate daily coding challenges based on his GitHub profile, evaluate solutions against test cases, and automatically export projects to new repositories.

Join us for Rubber Duck Thursdays! A lighthearted and informal stream where we live code on some projects. This week we explore how to bring the power of GitHub Copilot into your apps with the GitHub Copilot SDK, building hands-on examples and discussing patterns for integrating AI-powered coding assistance directly into developer tools and workflows.

Chris showcases Timestamp, an open-source countdown timer app built with vanilla TypeScript featuring an extensible theme system, world map wall clock, and 2500+ unit tests with 300+ Playwright end-to-end tests. He deep-dives into structuring GitHub Copilot custom instructions vs agents vs prompt files, demonstrates manager-specialist agent patterns, and walks through GitHub Actions automation for issue forms and theme scaffolding.

Chris builds a New Year countdown app from scratch using Vite, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS, leveraging GitHub Copilot's Plan agent for iterative requirements and a custom UI Performance Specialist agent. The stream covers adding time zone support with a world map, a fireworks celebration theme using fireworks.js, and a test-driven development approach.