Microsoft is introducing GitHub Copilot Extensions, a way to connect preferred third-party tools and services without leaving the coding environment or GitHub’s website. Using GitHub Copilot Chat, developers can prompt supported apps to perform actions, get additional context, generate files and pull requests, and more. Among the first services to be integrated include GitHub Copilot for Azure, DataStax, Docker, LambdaTest, LaunchDarkly, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft Azure and Teams, MongoDB, Octopus Deploy, Pangea, Pinecone, Product Science, ReadMe, Sentry, and Stripe.
GitHubCopilot Extensions is currently available in private preview.
Just like Slack once positioned itself as the app where work happens, so too is GitHub, which aims to be the platform of choice for anyone considering building something. It wants to eliminate context switching, creating a streamlined workflow that blends access to private and open-source repositories with artificial intelligence that frees up the creative process and brings in programs that expand beyond GitHub’s core competencies.
Microsoft’s Copilot is responsible for helping GitHub pursue this vision. Since its AI integration, the company has evolved even more, moving from offering a coding assistant to a full-blown workspace developer environment. With AI helping manage this much of the programming experience, why not extend it further to help manage external services?
Microsoft provided an example of GitHub Copilot for Azure, an AI assistant that manages operations from the cloud to the edge, and one of the first Copilot Extensions. “By calling on GitHub Copilot for Azure right in Copilot Chat, developers get answers to their questions about Azure—anything from choosing an Azure service to running a React app to selecting the best Azure database to use with Django,” Mario Rodriguez, GitHub’s senior vice president of product, writes in a blog post. “When it’s time to deploy, GitHub Copilot for Azure guides developers through the steps for a successful launch.”
“This is the future of software development, where developers spend less time searching and more time building,” Tillman Elser, Sentry’s engineering manager, is quoted as saying in that same article. “Working in natural language, they can write code, retrieve data, and solve problems, all using a single intuitive workflow.”
GitHub infers it will add more extensions in the future. Developers can access the existing ones within the GitHub Marketplace. Extensions are supported in GitHub Copilot Chat on GitHub.com, Visual Studio and VS Code.
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