Max Yermakhanov retweeted
Roll out customizations to teams within your organization so they start-right with GitHub Copilot!
Example: All GitHub field get the "revenue briefcase" plugins with MCP servers and skills for sales and account management :)
github.blog/changelog/2026-0…
Max Yermakhanov retweeted
PAID VERSION → FREE ALTERNATIVE
1. ChatGPT Plus → Google Gemini
2. Netflix Premium → Tubi
3. Spotify Premium → SoundCloud
4. YouTube Premium → NewPipe
5. Canva Pro → Adobe Express
6. Microsoft 365 → LibreOffice
7. Adobe Photoshop → GIMP
8. Figma Pro → Penpot
9. Adobe Premiere Pro → DaVinci Resolve
10. Grammarly Premium → LanguageTool
11. Midjourney → Microsoft Designer
12. Notion AI → Obsidian
13. Claude Pro → Google Gemini
14. Adobe Illustrator → Inkscape
15. Zoom Pro → Google Meet
16. Slack Pro → Discord
17. Dropbox → Google Drive
18. Adobe Acrobat Pro → PDFgear
19. GitHub Copilot → Codeium
20. CapCut Pro → DaVinci Resolve
21. After Effects → Blender
22. Microsoft Visio → draw io
23. 1Password → Bitwarden
24. LastPass Premium → Bitwarden
25. Webflow → Framer
26. Trello Premium → ClickUp
27. Calendly Premium → Cal. com
28. Audible → LibriVox
29. Amazon Prime Video → Pluto TV
30. Disney+ → Tubi
31. Apple TV+ → Pluto TV
32. Xbox Game Pass → Epic Games Store
33. Final Cut Pro → DaVinci Resolve
34. Adobe Lightroom → Darktable
35. Loom → OBS Studio
36. Typeform → Google Forms
37. Mailchimp Premium → Brevo
38. Zapier → Make
39. Miro → FigJam
40. Google Workspace → Zoho Workplace
41. Perplexity Pro → You com
42. Cursor Pro → Continue
43. Evernote → Joplin
44. Todoist Pro → Microsoft To Do
45. NordVPN → Proton VPN
46. ExpressVPN → Windscribe
47. AutoCAD → FreeCAD
48. Salesforce → HubSpot
49. Shopify → WooCommerce
50. Jira Premium → Plane
AI + CREATOR TOOLS
51. Jasper AI → Writesonic
52. Synthesia → HeyGen
53. ElevenLabs → TTSMaker
54. Murf AI → TTSMaker
55. Runway → Kling AI
56. Pika → Luma Dream Machine
57. Leonardo AI → Playground AI
58. DALL·E → Craiyon
59. Ideogram → Microsoft Designer
60. Gamma → Google Slides
61. Beautiful ai → Google Slides
62. Tome → Google Slides
63. Otter ai Pro → Notta
64. Fireflies ai → Fathom
65. Krisp Pro → NVIDIA Broadcast
66. Descript → Audacity
67. Riverside → OBS Studio
68. VEED Pro → CapCut
69. InVideo Pro → CapCut
70. Camtasia → OBS Studio
71. ScreenFlow → OBS Studio
72. Snagit → ShareX
73. Screen Studio → OBS Studio
74. QuillBot Premium → LanguageTool
75. Hemingway Editor Plus → LanguageTool
76. Freepik Premium → unDraw
77. Envato Elements → Mixkit
78. Shutterstock → Unsplash
79. Adobe Stock → Pexels
80. Epidemic Sound → Pixabay Music
81. Artlist → Free Music Archive
82. Flaticon Premium → SVG Repo
83. Icons8 Pro → Lucide
84. Font Awesome Pro → Heroicons
85. Adobe Fonts → Google Fonts
86. Sketch → Penpot
87. Affinity Photo → GIMP
88. Affinity Designer → Inkscape
89. CorelDRAW → Inkscape
90. Adobe InDesign → Scribus
91. Affinity Publisher → Scribus
92. Adobe XD → Penpot
93. Cinema 4D → Blender
94. Autodesk Maya → Blender
95. Autodesk 3ds Max → Blender
96. ZBrush → Blender
97. Substance 3D Painter → ArmorPaint
98. Pro Tools → Audacity
99. FL Studio → LMMS
100. Ableton Live → LMMS
101. Logic Pro → GarageBand
102. Adobe Audition → Audacity
103. Motion → Blender
104. DaVinci Resolve Studio → Kdenlive
105. Final Cut Pro → Shotcut
MARKETING + BUSINESS
106. Semrush → Ubersuggest
107. Ahrefs → Google Search Console
108. Moz Pro → Google Search Console
109. Surfer SEO → Google Keyword Planner
110. Similarweb → Google Trends
111. BuzzSumo → Google Trends
112. Hotjar Pro → Microsoft Clarity
113. Hootsuite → Buffer
114. Sprout Social → Metricool
115. Later → Buffer
116. SocialBee → Buffer
117. ConvertKit → Substack
118. Beehiiv → Substack
119. HubSpot Marketing Hub → Mautic
120. Intercom → Tawk to
121. Zendesk → Zammad
122. Freshdesk → Zammad
123. DocuSign → SignWell
124. PandaDoc → Jotform
125. SurveyMonkey → Google Forms
126. Airtable → Baserow
127. Asana Premium → OpenProject
128. Monday com → Taiga
129. ClickUp → OpenProject
130. Microsoft Project → ProjectLibre
131. QuickBooks Online → Wave
132. FreshBooks → Wave
133. Xero → Wave
134. Dropbox Sign → SignWell
135. Nitro PDF Pro → PDF24
136. Smallpdf Pro → PDF24
137. CamScanner Premium → Microsoft Lens
138. TeamViewer → RustDesk
139. AnyDesk → RustDesk
140. Dashlane Premium → Bitwarden
141. NordPass Premium → Bitwarden
142. Squarespace → WordPress
143. Wix Premium → WordPress
144. BigCommerce → WooCommerce
145. Elementor Pro → Brizy
146. Divi → Brizy
147. WP Rocket → LiteSpeed Cache
148. Yoast SEO Premium → Rank Math
149. Rank Math Pro → The SEO Framework
150. WPForms Pro → Forminator
151. Gravity Forms → Forminator
152. MemberPress → Paid Memberships Pro
153. Google One → Proton Drive
154. Microsoft OneDrive → MEGA
155. Microsoft Teams → Jitsi Meet
DEVELOPER + TECH
156. Replit Core → StackBlitz
157. Postman Pro → Insomnia
158. Docker Desktop Pro → Podman
159. Datadog → Grafana
160. New Relic → Grafana
161. Sentry → GlitchTip
162. Firebase → Supabase
163. MongoDB Atlas → Supabase
164. Vercel Pro → Cloudflare Pages
165. Netlify Pro → Cloudflare Pages
166. Heroku → Render
167. AWS → Oracle Cloud Free Tier
168. Twilio → Telnyx
169. Algolia → Meilisearch
170. Pinecone → Qdrant
171. OpenAI API → Google AI Studio
172. Claude API → Gemini API
173. WebStorm → VS Code
174. PyCharm Professional → VS Code
175. DataGrip → DBeaver
176. IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate → Eclipse
177. Rider → Visual Studio Community
178. Visual Studio Professional → Eclipse
179. Sublime Text → Notepad++
180. UltraEdit → Notepad++
181. Charles Proxy → mitmproxy
182. Splunk → OpenSearch
183. Terraform Cloud → OpenTofu
184. GitHub Enterprise → Gitea
185. GitLab Premium → Gitea
186. Elasticsearch Cloud → OpenSearch
187. SendGrid → Brevo
188. Mailgun → Brevo
189. Make → n8n
190. PagerDuty → Grafana OnCall
DATA + ENGINEERING + PROFESSIONAL
191. MATLAB → GNU Octave
192. Mathematica → SageMath
193. SPSS → PSPP
194. Stata → Gretl
195. Tableau → Apache Superset
196. Power BI Pro → Looker Studio
197. Qlik Sense → Metabase
198. Alteryx → KNIME
199. Minitab → Jamovi
200. ArcGIS → QGIS
201. SolidWorks → FreeCAD
202. SketchUp Pro → Blender
203. Revit → FreeCAD
204. Fusion 360 → FreeCAD
205. Rhino 3D → Blender
206. MATLAB Simulink → Scilab Xcos
207. LabVIEW → GNU Radio
208. COMSOL → OpenFOAM
209. ANSYS → OpenFOAM
210. Wolfram Alpha Pro → GeoGebra
211. QuarkXPress → Scribus
212. Microsoft Project → ProjectLibre
213. Microsoft Visio → diagrams net
214. Tableau → Metabase
215. Power BI Pro → Apache Superset
MORE FREE ALTERNATIVES
216. Adobe Premiere Pro → Kdenlive
217. After Effects → Natron
218. Final Cut Pro → Kdenlive
219. Adobe Acrobat Pro → PDF24
220. Adobe Express Premium → VistaCreate
221. Canva Pro → VistaCreate
222. Figma Pro → Lunacy
223. Sketch → Lunacy
224. Photoshop → Photopea
225. Lightroom → RawTherapee
226. Illustrator → Vectr
227. InDesign → Scribus
228. Pro Tools → Cakewalk
229. Ableton Live → Cakewalk
230. ScreenFlow → OBS Studio
231. Loom Business → ScreenPal
232. Slack Pro → Mattermost
233. Zoom Pro → Jitsi Meet
234. Discord Nitro → Telegram
235. 1Password → KeePassXC
236. LastPass Premium → KeePassXC
237. Evernote → Standard Notes
238. Todoist Pro → Super Productivity
239. Notion → Anytype
240. Airtable → NocoDB
241. Jira → OpenProject
242. Monday com → OpenProject
243. Calendly → ZCal
244. Typeform → Tally
245. Mailchimp → MailerLite
246. Hootsuite → Publer
247. Sprout Social → Buffer
248. HubSpot → Bitrix24
249. Adobe Stock → Pixabay
250. Shutterstock → Pexels
251. Envato Elements → Pixabay
252. Freepik Premium → Pixabay
253. Epidemic Sound → Free Music Archive
254. Artlist → Pixabay Music
255. Dropbox → Proton Drive
256. Google Drive Storage → MEGA
257. NordVPN → Windscribe
258. ExpressVPN → Proton VPN
259. TeamViewer → RustDesk
260. AnyDesk → Chrome Remote Desktop
261. AutoCAD → LibreCAD
262. SolidWorks → SolveSpace
263. MATLAB → Scilab
264. SPSS → Jamovi
265. Tableau → Metabase
266. Power BI Pro → Metabase
267. ArcGIS → QGIS
268. WebStorm → VSCodium
269. PyCharm Professional → VSCodium
270. DataGrip → Beekeeper Studio
271. Postman Pro → Bruno
272. Docker Desktop Pro → Rancher Desktop
273. Datadog → Prometheus
274. New Relic → OpenTelemetry
275. Sentry → Highlight io
276. Firebase → Appwrite
277. MongoDB Atlas → Neon
278. Vercel Pro → GitHub Pages
279. Netlify Pro → GitHub Pages
280. Algolia → Typesense
281. Pinecone → Weaviate
282. Elasticsearch Cloud → OpenSearch
283. GitHub Copilot → Continue
284. Cursor Pro → VS Code + Continue
285. Zapier → n8n
286. Miro → Excalidraw
287. Trello Premium → Taiga
288. Asana Premium → Taiga
289. Adobe XD → Penpot
290. ProtoPie → Penpot
291. Zeplin → Storybook
292. Adobe Audition → Ocenaudio
293. Camtasia → ShareX + OBS Studio
294. Microsoft 365 → ONLYOFFICE
295. Google Workspace → ONLYOFFICE
296. Adobe Acrobat Pro → Stirling PDF
297. Microsoft Visio → yEd
298. Microsoft Project → GanttProject
299. QuickBooks → GnuCash
300. Xero → GnuCash
300 PAID TOOLS.
300 FREE ALTERNATIVES.
Stop paying for subscriptions when free options exist.
Bookmark this.
Check it before you buy your next tool.
Max Yermakhanov retweeted
Pro tip:
Tokens are precious.
Run `/chronicle cost-tips` in @GitHub Copilot to get tips on what you're doing that's burning all those precious tokens and how to get more bang for the buck.
Max Yermakhanov retweeted
Zero‑freeze migrations are here. 😎
ELM syncs Azure Repos → GitHub while devs keep working, then cuts over in <30 min. No multi‑day downtime, no all‑at‑once chaos — just clean, predictable DevOps migration.
👉 buff.ly/GThUBMW
Max Yermakhanov retweeted
Replace `https` with `gh` on any repo on GitHub.com to open in the Copilot app!
Max Yermakhanov retweeted
MAI-Code-1-Flash is now rolled out to 100% of GitHub Copilot Free, Education, Pro, Pro+, and Max subscribers in @code!
Max Yermakhanov retweeted
One of the new, buzzy jobs in Silicon Valley is the AI Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), an engineer who is embedded within a client organization to help customize solutions, such as building and tuning agentic workflows that suit the client’s particular needs. I’ve heard from people who are wondering anew about the FDE career path since OpenAI and Anthropic started building new teams to place FDEs within client organizations.
The rise of FDEs for AI workloads is one way AI is creating new jobs (and why the jobpolcalypse narrative of upcoming job market collapse is false -- there will be many AI and non-AI jobs). However, I believe there will be far more AI Engineer jobs than FDEs, as I explain below.
The FDE role was pioneered about two decades ago by Palantir, which sent engineers to government locations to work on secure, air-gapped networks. In addition to having good technical skills, FDEs need communication skills and sometimes business skills. For example, they may need to speak with clients to understand their needs, formulate a strategy to prioritize projects, explain complex technology, and respectfully push back if a client asks for something unrealistic. They’re enjoying a resurgence because of the amount of work involved in taking an off-the-shelf LLM and building it into a custom agentic workflow that fits particular business needs.
However, I believe the number of AI Engineer jobs will be far larger. A company might accept a few FDEs to be embedded within its organization. But most companies will want far more of their own employees working on their projects. While my organizations do hire FDEs, we hire far more AI Engineers! Also, a common client concern is that it is hard to find vendor-neutral FDEs — they are, after all, there to deeply integrate a particular vendor’s product into a company. In this moment when it’s hard to predict which AI service will be the best one in a year’s time, optionality (the ability to pick whatever vendor turns out to fit best in the future) is very valuable. In contrast, letting FDEs tightly bind a company’s processes significantly reduces optionality.
Right now, I see surging demand for AI Engineers who can build software applications using AI software components (like LLM prompting, agentic frameworks, evals, etc.) and effectively use AI coding agents (like Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity CLI, and OpenCode). As the AI Engineer role matures, I expect it to fragment into more specialized roles, like the generic Software Engineer role from decades ago fragmented into frontend, backend, mobile, data engineering, devops, and so on.
What will be the future, specialized AI engineering roles? I don’t know. Perhaps there will be AI FDEs, LLMOps Engineers, Evals Engineers, AI Data Engineers, Harness Engineers, and other roles we don’t have names for yet. But for now, I see a lot of AI engineers who are generalists create a lot of value. Skilled AI Engineers are in very high demand! As our field continues to mature over the coming decade, I look forward to new specializations within AI Engineering that create even more job opportunities.
[Original text: The Batch newsletter]
Max Yermakhanov retweeted
MICROSOFT OPEN-SOURCED A GOVERNANCE LAYER FOR YOUR AI AGENTS
and it's exactly what agentic ai has been missing
here's what agent governance toolkit does:
▫️ intercepts every tool call in deterministic code before it hits the wire denied actions aren't unlikely, they're structurally impossible
▫️ yaml policy engine lets you allow, deny, or require human approval per action
▫️ zero-trust identity via spiffe/did/mtls no more 5 agents sharing one api key
▫️ 4-level execution sandbox with privilege rings so agents can't escape their scope
▫️ tamper-evident merkle audit logs for compliance and incident response
▫️ covers all 10/10 owasp agentic top 10 risks
▫️ works with langchain, crewai, autogen, openai agents sdk, semantic kernel, and more
one pip install...any framework...python, typescript, go, rust, .net all supported
because "please follow the rules" in a system prompt is not a guardrail...it's a suggestion
github.com/microsoft/agent-g…
Max Yermakhanov retweeted
🚨 Microsoft just open-sourced something every .NET developer using AI tools should pay attention to.
The dotnet/skills repo went public on GitHub. It's a curated set of reusable engineering skills that AI coding agents (Copilot, Claude, Gemini, Codex) can load on demand to write better, more consistent .NET code.
I've been running my own skills setup for months. Custom CLAUDEmd files, project-specific commands, repeatable workflows for writing, reviewing, and refactoring code. It works really well. But it's mine. Nobody else on the team gets to use it.
That's what changes now.
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗶𝘁:
• Skills for aspnetcore, Aspire, Orleans
• AI + Agents patterns
• Testing, Architecture, Migrations
• Works with any agentic AI tool, not just Copilot
𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀:
Most AI prompts in .NET projects get written from scratch every single time. Same context, same examples, same patterns. Typed into the chat over and over.
Skills flip that. The knowledge lives in the repo, the agent loads what it needs, and your code stays consistent across the team. No more "perfect prompt" trials.
This is the same approach that has been quietly winning in the Claude Code and Cursor communities. Microsoft is now making it native to the .NET ecosystem.
If you ship .NET code with AI in the loop, this becomes the foundation you build on top of.
Repo linked in the comments.
Tomorrow at the DevOps usergroup: “Adopting GitHub in the Enterprise: Best Practices and Strategies”
We’ll cover practical advice, common pitfalls, and real-world do’s and don’ts for successfully adopting GitHub at enterprise scale. Register for free at meetup.com/toronto-enterpris…
I am speaking at Mississauga .NET User Group this Thursday on Agentic SDLC. And, it looks like the great @robwindsor is going to be in attendance, among many others. Looking forward to the talk and an opportunity to catch up with old friends. Register at meetup.com/mississauganetug/…
On my way to MVP Summit... my first in person MVP summit since before COVID. Very exciting. Looking forward to tons of learning, interesting discussions, meeting old friends and making new ones... #MVPSummit2026 #MVPBuzz
Hosting GitHub Copilot Dev Days Toronto event today with @dlloyd at the @Centrilogic office. This hands-on, in-person session is all about applying AI-assisted coding techniques to real-world development using @GitHubCopilot. It’s shaping up to be an awesome learning experience!
Max Yermakhanov retweeted
Introducing Copilot Chronicle. All of your session data indexed and searchable by the agent via FTS and SQL queries.
Analyze your sessions to auto-update instructions, find details about that bug you fixed last week, and figure out which times of day you're most productive.
Great turnout at last night’s Toronto Enterprise DevOps user group! Our “Agentic DevOps: Redefining SDLC” session packed the room and sparked lively conversation. Thanks to everyone who came out and joined in. Happy Holidays — see you in 2026! 🎉❄️ #DevOps #AgenticAI
Max Yermakhanov retweeted
The Only Git Command List You'll Need to Bookmark
→ Daily Lifesavers:
• git status — Your repo’s daily health check
• git add . — “Take everything, I’m ready”
• git commit -m "msg" — The diary entry for your work
• git push — Send it to the world
• git pull --rebase — Fresh updates, minus the merge mess
→ Branch Magicians:
• git branch — Show me all timelines
• git checkout -b feature-x — Start a new adventure
• git switch main — Jump between universes
• git merge feature-x — Combine worlds
• git rebase -i HEAD~5 — Rewrite history like a pro
→ Debugging Detectives:
• git log --oneline --graph --decorate — Visual crime scene
• git diff — What changed? Who changed it? Why??
• git blame {file} — Name and shame (lovingly)
• git bisect — Find that one evil commit
• git fsck — Check repo sanity
→ Oops Fixers:
• git restore . — Undo accidental chaos
• git reset --hard HEAD~1 — Delete the last mistake
• git checkout -- {file} — Bring back a lost file
• git stash — Hide your unfinished sins
• git reflog — The ultimate undo time machine
→ Collaboration Superpowers:
• git fetch --all — Pull updates, no drama
• git remote -v — Show your repo connections
• git pull origin main — Sync with the team
• git push -u origin branch-name — Set an upstream buddy
• git cherry-pick {hash} — Borrow just one commit from another branch
→ Release Masters:
• git tag -a v1.0 -m "first release" — Stamp your moment
• git tag — All milestones at a glance
• git push --tags — Ship your releases
• git describe --tags — Find where you are in release land
• git archive --format=zip HEAD > release.zip — Pack and ship your code
→ Cleanup Crew:
• git gc — Garbage collector for your repo
• git prune — Get rid of unreachable commits
• git clean -fd — Delete untracked files (danger + power)
• git reset --soft HEAD~1 — Undo commit but keep changes
• git branch -d feature-x — Remove dead branches
→ Power User Tricks:
• git config --global alias.s status — Create your own shortcuts
• git show {hash} — Peek into a commit’s soul
• git shortlog -sn — Who contributed how much?
• git worktree add ../dir branch — Work on multiple branches at once
• git grep -n "text" — Search inside the repo like a detective
What are YOUR go-to Git commands?
Max Yermakhanov retweeted
You may have heard of the nx project being hacked last week. This could happen to you too if you use GitHub Actions. Learn how to configure your policies to prevent this.
Here are 14 things you should know about GitHub Actions and should apply today.
jessehouwing.net/github-acti…
Before I go on vacation, I wanted to share this birthday card I got last month. Stay calm and carry on, #DevOps folks. See you in a couple of weeks...
