I automated my job (and it made me a better leader) - The GitHub Blog

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Ashley Willis·@ashleymcnamara

June 23, 2026

9 minutes

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Here’s the thing about senior leadership that nobody warns you about: the job isn’t hard because of any single task. It’s hard because your work lives in fifteen different places and your brain is the only system connecting them.

Meetings bleed into each other. Decisions are made in threads without you. Someone mentioned your name in a planning meeting, and now there’s an action item living in a doc you’ve never seen. You’ll find out about it in two weeks when someone casually asks for an update. Fun.

Last year, my team almost missed a performance review deadline because it was announced in a channel nobody was watching. One person spent ten minutes searching Slack and couldn’t find it. Another found the date in a random, unrelated channel. I ended up posting “I’ll admit we dropped the ball on following up in Slack, so that’s on me.” That’s the kind of thing that keeps happening when your brain is the only system connecting everything.

I was spending so much energy on context-switching that I had nothing left for the thinking, connecting, and creating that my role actually requires (and that’s the work I actually like doing). But I started using automations in the GitHub Copilot app, and it changed my entire workflow. Bear with me.

What automations actually are

The GitHub Copilot app is a standalone desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux, built for working with agents, not just talking to them. You can run parallel sessions across repositories, each on its own branch and worktree. You can see what agents are doing in real time through canvases, which are bidirectional work surfaces where you and the agent operate on the same plan, terminal, or browser session. Progress is visible and steerable, not buried in chat history.

Automations are scheduled prompts that run against your real work context: your calendar, your email, your messages, your GitHub repos. They connect through MCP servers and integrations, so they can see what’s happening across all the places your work lives. They tell me what actually needs my attention, which lets me ignore the rest.

Think of them as agents with a standing brief. You tell them what to care about, how to think, and when to run. Then they just… do it. Every day. Without you remembering to ask. Which is good, because you won’t.

What this looks like

I’m a senior director at GitHub. I lead developer relations. My scope is wide, my calendar is full, and my brain works differently than most people assume. I’m AuDHD, which means I’m good at pattern recognition and deep focus, but genuinely terrible at remembering which thread I promised to follow up on three days ago.

I didn’t set out to build 40 automations. I was curious about the automations tab, asked the app what it could do, and it suggested things I hadn’t thought of. The first time I set one up, I opened a chat and said something like: “Look across all of my work surfaces, my calendar, my email, my messages, and figure out where I’m dropping balls, where I might need help, and suggest automations that would be useful.”

It immediately suggested about six. The first drafts weren’t perfect, and that’s okay. You refine them. You give them voice. You teach them how you think. Once I saw what was possible, I kept going. Now I have about 40. (I know. I know.)

I’m not going to walk through all of them. (You’re welcome.) But here are the categories that matter most, and some highlights from each.

The morning brief

Every day before I open anything, several automations have already run. Meeting Prep pulls my calendar and builds context for every meeting, with different formats for one-on-ones vs. large syncs vs. external calls. By the time I sit down, I know what each meeting is about and what I need to bring. Pre-Meeting Access Check verifies I actually have access to the docs and links referenced in the invite. No more showing up and realizing the agenda doc is locked. If you’ve never experienced that particular panic, honestly, must be nice. Daily Triage Digest sweeps GitHub, email, and messages for anything that needs my attention.

The cumulative effect is that my mornings went from “frantically opening twelve tabs while pretending I’ve read the agenda” to “reading a few summaries with coffee.” It’s a different life.

Staying current

I cannot be surprised by our own launches. That’s literally the job.

Ship Decoder finds everything GitHub shipped in the last 24 hours and explains it to me in plain language. This is real context I can use in conversations. Launch Radar runs weekly and surfaces upcoming launches...