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GitHub Copilot extensibility in VS Code

Use GitHub Copilot extensibility to expand the functionality of Copilot Chat in Visual Studio Code or add AI-powered features to your VS Code extension. To extend Copilot in VS Code, you build a VS Code extension and use the extension APIs to interact with GitHub Copilot.

Depending on your use case, you have the following options to use Copilot in your VS Code extension:

  • VS Code Chat extension: use the Chat API to create a chat participant that gives users a natural-language interface and provides domain-specific help via the Chat view in VS Code. Optionally, you can use the Copilot Large Language Model (LLM) to interpret user prompts and generate responses.

  • Use Copilot's LLM: use the Language Model API and the VS Code extension APIs to build AI-powered features into your extension and enhance editor-specific interactions.

Alternatively, you can also build a Copilot Extension, implemented as a GitHub App with additional capabilities. Copilot Extensions work across all supported IDEs and GitHub, but don't have access to functionalities specific to VS Code. Get more info about Copilot Extensions in the GitHub documentation.

Use cases

You can use Copilot's capabilities to enhance the development experience in VS Code by integrating AI-powered features into your extension. Here are some examples of how you can use Copilot in your VS Code extension:

  • Docs querying: A chat participant could allow Copilot Chat to use Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to query a third-party documentation service and generate responses based on the retrieved information.

  • AI-assisted coding: Use the Copilot LLM to provide editor annotations to provide coding suggestions.

  • AI-powered reviews: Use the Copilot LLM to review your code for security vulnerabilities or performance improvements.

  • Data retrieval: A chat participant could allow Copilot Chat to query a database or third-party data service to retrieve information about a specific topic.

  • Enterprise coding assistant: a chat participant that is grounded in the data of your enterprise and that is aware of the specific coding guidelines your company follows.

  • Enhance extensions: Use the Language Model API to add AI-powered features to your existing VS Code extensions.

These are some examples of extensions in the Visual Studio Marketplace that contribute a chat participant to the Chat view in VS Code.

Go to the Marketplace or use the integrated Extensions view and search for more extensions by using the chat-participant tag.

Get started with Copilot extensibility in VS Code

To get started with extending Copilot in your VS Code extension, explore the following resources:

  • Tutorial: AI-powered code annotations: step-by-step guide to implement a VS Code extension that uses the Language Model API to generate code annotations in the editor to help improve your code.

  • Tutorial: Code tutor chat participant: step-by-step guide to implement a code tutor chat participant that enables users to ask for explaining a technical topic by using natural language in the Chat view in VS Code.

  • Chat participant sample: sample code for getting started with building a VS Code Chat extension that uses the Chat API and Language Model API.

  • Extension guides: Learn how to use the Chat API and Language Model API to extend Copilot in your VS Code extension.

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