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Copilot in Visual Studio Will Get Access to Org Knowledge Bases
Visual Studio devs who have become dependent upon GitHub Copilot AI assistance will have to wait a while for a hot new feature already available in Visual Studio Code.
The more complex architecture of the Visual Studio IDE means Copilot updates get rolled out sooner to the modular VS Code, and that is the case with the ability to "Ask questions about your knowledge bases within VS Code (coming soon to Visual Studio)."
That's a section of Microsoft-owned GitHub's post on what's new for the tool in July 2024.
"By typing @github #kb, you can now select a knowledge base from the list, and then enter any questions about the Markdown files across multiple repositories grouped as a knowledge base," GitHub said. "Providing the context of a knowledge to Copilot means you get organization specific suggestions tailored to your codebase and standards, unlocking organization intelligence as you and your team members implement code directly in VS Code. You can also ask questions in natural language and receive answers contained in the knowledge base."
That capability arrived in June with an update to GitHub's Copilot Enterprise offering.
At that time, discussing the same feature, GitHub said: "Copilot will respond, using the Markdown documentation in your knowledge base as context for its answer. This allows Copilot Enterprise users to combine search results and internal documentation with editor context using existing chat variables like #file and #selection."
[Click on image for larger view.] Using Both @github and #web in One Query (source: GitHub).
The feature is part of the company's Chat offering, which greatly improved the utility of the AI assistant by adding the ability to communicate with natural language.
Other Chat functionality highlighted by GitHub in its July update post include:
- Search across any of your repositories in GitHub from VS Code and Visual Studio: By typing
@github in Copilot Chat, users can ask questions about any indexed repository on GitHub. Previously, Copilot could only respond to questions about the active repository using the @workspace command in VS Code or #solution in Visual Studio, and accessing other repositories required having GitHub.com open on another screen.
- Access Bing Search right from chat for VS Code and Visual Studio: Integrated Bing-powered web search directly in the IDE: This allows users to inquire about new frameworks, programming languages and best practices without needing to switch contexts. By adding
#web with @github, users can initiate a web search, and Copilot will handle the rest.
"We've made some small-but-meaningful changes to how you can interact with Copilot Chat in GitHub.com so that it's easier, more efficient, and more natural," GitHub summarized. "Users can now type out messages while the system generates responses, navigate through message history, and stop chat generation altogether -- sometimes the small changes are the big wins."
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.