Stars at GitHub Universe 2025
I was invited for the third time to GitHub Universe happening at Fort Mason in San Francisco, thanks to the GitHub Stars program I’m part of for the fifth year, and enjoyed every minute of it.
Day 0
On the first day, since we count from zero, was the event at GitHub HQ in downtown San Francisco dedicated to GitHub Stars, Microsoft MVPs, and Open Source contributors. It was full of talks, sneak peaks of the Universe announcements, and chill out discussions with GitHub’s management.
Since we were all under NDA we were able to raise difficult questions and get honest answers, all while being positive about what we can do to make Open Source as good as it can be with the help from GitHub.
Day 1 and 2
GitHub Universe 2025 was hosted in the same place as last year: Fort Mason. The space is impressive, with multiple buildings close to each other, and beautiful view on the bay. The weather was yet again perfect: warm and sunny throughout the whole event. We got our badges at Day 0, so there was no need to stay in line for registration in the morning - perfect moment to snap a pic with my own star before everyone stepping on it.
The first day of the conference started with the keynote: this year it was all about Copilot. From Agent HQ, a mission control center for agents and tasks, through custom agents, plan mode, agentic code review, to MCP integration, code quality, and much more.
After the keynote I went to the Stars Lounge, our booth for Stars to hang out, where I spent most of the time. In the meantime I was going out to check all the other booths, visited Makerspace to grab LEGO Copilot (you had to assemble it yourself first), made my own Mona sticker, grabbed a few gadgets and had some cool conversations throughout both days.
I also attended the LEGO talk, which was really interesting. At some point the RenderATL folks took over out booth, which was really nice, as they bring fun topics to discuss, including The Commits awards show.
Game Zone, PixiJS and Spark booths
One cool thing made different this year compared to the previous ones was a Game Zone built by Lee Reilly and the team. It was a huge screen put out in the open, right in front of the food court. You could play different web games using console controllers, either solo or in a team.
At the end of the second day the Space Huggers game from js13kGames 2021 was being showcased, so I gathered small Stars representation to have four of them play the game together, which was really enjoyable.
Talking about games: there were also PixiJS and Spark booths during the first day of Universe. I had a chat with Mat Groves, PixiJS creator, on Day 0, and noticed their booth was quite busy during the conference. Same goes for the Spark booth right next to them, where I met Diego Marcos - our js13kGames 2025 WebXR expert, first time talking with him face to face.
Who knows, maybe we’ll have PixiJS or Spark challenges in the upcoming Gamedev.js Jam 2026? That would be awesome.
Wrapping the games topic: GitHub Game Off organized by Lee started on November 1st and will be running till the end of the month, and the theme in 2025 is Waves - I’ll try to join this year, with the help from Copilot or Beam.
Food
Since I’ve stayed at the exact same hotel near Union Square as usual, we had breakfast at Pinecrest Diner each morning - the classic US experience including lots of greasy bacon, steak with scrambled eggs, and coffee refill. I gained more than 2 kilograms in 4 days on this alone!
Beside breakfast, we also had ramen for dinner on Sunday evening, snacks and drinks during Day 0 at GitHub HQ, solid lunch options during both days of Universe, with snacks at the CodeRabbit meetup after the first day of the conference.
We’ve wrapped the event with the proper peruvian dinner at Mariposas with delicious ceviche, empanadas, and lomo saltado after the second day.
Shopping
Did I mention my hotel was near Union Square? Turns out a new Nintendo shop was opened recently literally one block away, and Pop-Mart one more block further.
I couldn’t miss the opportunity and bought some gifts - mostly Mario, but also Pikmin as apparently a whole section of the shop was dedicated to those little creatures. I’ve enjoyed playing Pikmin 4 with my daughter Kasia, so got one immediately.
I couldn’t miss Pop-Mart of course, so I went for the surprise box with the newest Labubu monsters’ letter keychains as the dolls themselves were already sold out. Kasia wanted a K, but ended up with H, so she’s laughing she now has Habubu.
Summary
It was truly awesome to meet fellow Stars and GitHub folks, Open Source friends old and new.
I’m proud to be a GitHub Star, and hope I’ll return to San Francisco next year.