GitHub Copilot Chat in your IDE
GitHub Copilot Chat is a tool within certain Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) that answers coding questions. It helps by suggesting code, explaining code functionality, creating unit tests, and fixing bugs.
How it works
You have two different ways of providing prompts to GitHub Copilot:
- In-editor: In this mode, you provide text comments, and through the Tab or Return key, Copilot is able to produce an output.
- Chat mode: In chat mode, you type a prompt in the text box, and then GitHub Copilot will treat an open file/files as context (if you use
@workspace, then it will look at all files in your directory).
A text file can be, for example, a code file like app.py or a Jupyter Notebook. Copilot can treat both these files as context, together with your typed prompt.
Figure 17.1: GitHub Copilot chat on the left side and an open Jupyter Notebook on the right side
