GitHub Copilot

What is GitHub Copilot?

GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant from GitHub (owned by Microsoft) that lives inside VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, Neovim, and other editors as a plugin. It does not replace your editor — it adds AI assistance on top of the one you already use.

It has two main modes: autocomplete (suggestions appear as you type, accepted with Tab) and Copilot Chat (a sidebar panel where you ask questions about your code, request fixes, or generate new functions in plain English). The combination makes it the most accessible AI coding tool for developers who don't want to change their workflow.

Plans

Students, teachers, and OSS maintainers can get Copilot Pro free through GitHub's verified program — worth checking before paying.

The magic moment

Open any code file and write a comment describing what you want:

// fetch user by ID from the database, return null if not found

Press Enter and wait half a second. Copilot writes the entire function body. Press Tab to accept it. This comment-to-code pattern — describe it, accept it — is Copilot's core experience and the reason millions of developers use it daily. It doesn't always get it right, but it's right often enough to meaningfully cut the time spent on boilerplate.

Step-by-step setup

1. Open VS Code (get it from code.visualstudio.com if needed)
2. Press Cmd+Shift+X to open Extensions
3. Search for GitHub Copilot and click Install
4. A sign-in prompt appears — click Allow and complete GitHub login in your browser
5. Open any code file and start typing — greyed-out suggestions appear after a brief pause
6. Press Tab to accept a suggestion, or keep typing to dismiss it
7. Open Copilot Chat via the speech bubble icon in the left sidebar

Total time: about 10 minutes including GitHub login.

Key features

Inline autocomplete — as you type, Copilot predicts what comes next. It uses the context of the current file and nearby open files. It's best at boilerplate, repetitive patterns, and code you've already written once nearby.

Copilot Chat — a conversational panel for anything that needs explaining or generating:

• "Explain what this function does"
• "Write a unit test for this"
• "Why is this returning undefined?"
• "Refactor this to be more readable"

Copilot in GitHub.com — Copilot Chat is also available inside pull requests on GitHub itself. You can ask questions about a PR's diff, get a summary of what changed, and request code review suggestions.

Fix suggestion on errors — when a squiggly error line appears in VS Code, a small Copilot icon shows nearby. Clicking it suggests a fix. Works well for common errors and type mismatches.

Getting more out of Copilot

Write comments before code. Copilot uses your comments as instructions. The more descriptive the comment, the better the output.

# Parse ISO 8601 datetime string, convert to UTC, 
# return as Unix timestamp. Raise ValueError for invalid input.
def parse_datetime_to_utc(s: str) -> int:

Use chat for understanding, autocomplete for generation. If you're stuck on code that already exists, Chat is better. If you're writing new code, autocomplete is faster.

Accept partially. In VS Code, Cmd+→ accepts one word of a suggestion at a time instead of the full line. Useful when 90% of the suggestion is right.

Copilot vs Cursor vs Windsurf

Pick Copilot if you want AI inside your current workflow without switching editors, or if your team is on GitHub Business and Copilot is already included. Upgrade to Cursor or Windsurf when you want multi-file reasoning, codebase-wide chat, and agentic task handling.