In November 2023, GitHub Copilot’s free version was launched in India. At that time, many had questions like “Is it really free for everyone?”, “Can Copilot edit multiple files at once?”,  “What’s the name of Copilot’s mascot?”, and most importantly: “What exactly can GitHub AI Copilot do?” In short, it can do a lot. Integrated directly into GitHub, this agent kicks off when you assign a GitHub issue to Copilot or prompt it within VS Code. It sets up a secure, fully customizable development environment powered by GitHub Actions. Having GitHub AI Copilot on your team won’t compromise your security – existing policies like branch protections remain fully in place. 

Moreover, the agent’s pull requests must be accepted by a human before any CI/CD workflows are triggered, adding an extra layer of security for your build and deployment processes. In this blog, we will look into what is GitHub Copilot, how GitHub Copilot works, and GitHub Copilot features.    

What is GitHub Copilot?

GitHub Copilot is an AI-enabled tool that acts as a powerful coding assistant, created by GitHub and OpenAI to aid programmers through code suggestions, whether lines of code or full functions. It serves as a coding assistant and uses the OpenAI Codex model (a derivative of GPT-3 and GPT-4) that is trained on a huge variety of programming languages and publicly available code samples.

Copilot does understand the context of your code and is thus able to offer relevant code snippets, functions, algorithms, or even whole classes and files. It reads your statements, document strings, and your code itself and provides smart suggestions.

Seamlessly integrated into Visual Studio Code and other development environments through extensions, GitHub AI Copilot integrates perfectly into your normal coding routine, assisting you in coding more quickly.

How GitHub Copilot Works

GitHub Copilot functions through a machine learning model, the OpenAI Codex, that interprets the context of the code you are typing and suggests code in real-time. Below, we have displayed how GitHub Copilot Works:

Context Understanding: GitHub AI Copilot reads your code, comments, and even filenames to determine what you’re typing, changing to suit various programming languages to keep up with your coding aims.

Code generation: Based on its AI training, Copilot anticipates and provides context-appropriate code suggestions—from short lines to intricate functions or classes—in real time for an easier coding process.

IDE Integration: Seamlessly integrated with tools such as Visual Studio Code, Copilot gives you in-the-moment code suggestions that you can modify or implement immediately, accelerating your workflow and coding pace.

Public Code Learning: Exposed to a wide range of public code, Copilot not only recommends the right code but also trendy coding patterns and solutions known to the world’s developer community.

Adaptation: While it does not learn from your code in real-time, Copilot still adapts its recommendations to the immediate context and your input, emphasizing relevance and usefulness.

GitHub Copilot features

Take a look at a few of the amazing GitHub Copilot Features : 

Code Completion

GitHub AI Copilot offers autocomplete-style suggestions in supported IDEs, including VS Code, Eclipse, Xcode, and many more. If you’re using VS Code, you can also take advantage of “next edit suggestions.” These predict where you’re likely to edit next and suggest the next edit accordingly.

Copilot Chat

Copilot Chat provides an interactive chat interface for asking coding-related questions and is available on several sites. Additionally, users can take advantage of various skills with Copilot Chat.

Copilot Coding Agent

The Copilot coding agent is an autonomous AI tool that can make code changes on your behalf. Simply assign a GitHub issue to Copilot, and the agent will handle the required changes, then create a pull request for your review. You can also request a pull request directly through Copilot Chat. For more details, see Coding agent.

Copilot in the CLI

Copilot’s terminal-based chat interface lets you ask questions about the command line. You can request a command recommendation or ask for clarification on specific commands. Additionally, it also integrates seamlessly with the new Canary channel of Windows. For further details, see Using GitHub AI Copilot in the command line.

Copilot Coding Agent

The Copilot coding agent is a self-executing AI that can make code changes on your behalf. Any GitHub-related tasks are allocated to Copilot, the agent implements the necessary modifications, and generates a pull request for your review.  

Copilot pull request summaries 

A Copilot pull request provides a brief description of all the modifications, all the files impacted, and lets the analyst know about the target areas while conducting the reviews.  

GitHub Copilot Extensions

These extensions improve the overall functionality of GitHub AI Copilot Chat by seamlessly combining external utilities into their systems. Anyone can create these extensions, make them accessible to all, and they are easily shareable with others.

Benefits of Using Google GitHub Copilot

Take a look at a few benefits of using GitHub Copilot features: 

Create Unit Tests

GitHub Copilot helps you generate optimized unit tests for your projects by analyzing your project.

Documentation and Code Explanation

This helps you document your whole code in an organized manner and also explains the working of the existing code, if any issues occur, especially beneficial for those who are new to this project. 

Translate Code to a New Language 

GitHub AI Copilot helps you migrate your code to any new language with minimal effort. This is especially beneficial for those who don’t have much experience with a specific language.     

Debug Code

It becomes frustrating when the bugs constantly arise, but what if someone else fixes it for you? This is exactly what Copilot does. GitHub Copilot analyzes your whole code and understands the context to draw the best solutions.   

Refactoring code

Copilot helps you make your code cleaner and optimize, improving your overall performance by refactoring your code. All you have to do is place the code you want to improve and ask Copilot to refactor it.    

Multi-file editing with Copilot Edits

Google Copilot allows you to edit various files simultaneously.  This saves you a lot of time as you won’t have to go through each and every file to make changes; you can make modifications in multiple files at the same time.