GitHub Copilot
Microsoft's AI pair programmer in your IDE
GitHub Copilot is the most widely adopted AI coding assistant, available in VS Code, JetBrains, Neovim, and more. Powered by OpenAI Codex and GPT-4, it offers inline suggestions, chat, and the new Copilot Workspace for end-to-end task completion.
Free for verified students and open source maintainers; $10/month otherwise
What You Can Do with GitHub Copilot
Common use cases where GitHub Copilot excels
Intelligent Autocomplete
Context-aware code completion that understands your patterns and completes entire functions.
Test Generation
Automatically generate unit tests for existing functions with edge case coverage.
Documentation
Generate docstrings, comments, and README sections from existing code.
Code Explanation
Ask Copilot Chat to explain complex code, algorithms, or unfamiliar patterns.
Prompt Tips for GitHub Copilot
Expert techniques to get the best results from GitHub Copilot
Write descriptive comments first
Type a comment describing what you want ('// Function to validate email with RFC 5322 compliance') and Copilot will complete the implementation.
Use Copilot Chat for complex tasks
Open the chat panel for multi-step tasks: 'Refactor this function to use async/await and add error handling'. More reliable than inline for complex changes.
Accept partial suggestions
Use Ctrl+Right to accept one word at a time from Copilot's suggestion. You don't have to accept the whole thing — cherry-pick what's useful.