There have been new integrations added to Copilot workflows in Visual Studio to make it even more seamless to navigate between in-editor activities and the Chat window that has context of global workspace, conversational history, and more to get the most out of Copilot, wherever you are.
With the latest updates, you can streamline your workflow with slight tweaks and follow-up questions, allowing Copilot to provide the most relevant set of suggestions for your workflows. These include enhancements to inline chat and code completions in 17.11 and Copilot in quick info in 17.12 Preview 1.
Refine Completions with Inline Chat
You can now use inline chat to refine the completions provided to you by GitHub Copilot. Instead of pressing Tab
to accept, you can press Alt + /
to modify and open an inline chat session and diff viewer.From here, you can interact with Copilot to adjust the completions provided to you.
Copilot will then tailor the completions provided based on your inline chat message, which you can then modify or accept.
You can learn more about refining GitHub Copilot completions in the VS Blog on refining completions.
Ask follow-up questions about Copilot-generated Quick Info in Chat Window
Want to ask any follow-up questions on Copilot-generated summaries of symbols? Now, whenever you invoke Copilot in the Quick Info hover over a symbol, you will have an option to transition the conversation to the Chat window.
In the Chat window, you can ask any follow-up questions on the function or project in general to clarify or gather any additional details.
Navigate from Inline Chat to Chat Window
Similarly, if you start an inline chat session with Copilot, you can see a window to navigate to the Chat pane for follow-up questions using the familiar chat pane on a larger screen, as inline chat session lengths are shorter for accessibility.
This will quickly navigate you to the chat window, where you can ask any follow-up questions on this file or the workspace in general.
To learn more about inline chat updates, please read the VS Blog post on Copilot flow updates.
What do you think?
With the latest integrations to GitHub Copilot workflows, you can customize your experience and how you engage with Copilot to gather the most personalized results.
To access these updates, you’ll need an active GitHub Copilot subscription and the latest version of Visual Studio.
In addition, our team is working hard on improving C++ integrations with Copilot Chat, so please let us know any other enhancements you’d like to see to your C++ workflows and content you’d like to see.
Better control over which files get inline completions from Copilot would be huge. There are places where it works well and other places where it just gets in the way. I use a .txt file to keep notes for a project. I don't want the completions as they just get in the way. I might very rarely ask explicitly for a completion. Perhaps we could get a setting where if one consistently dismisses the completions,...