GitHub Copilot Extensions now understand context in your environment

context passing example

GitHub Copilot Extensions can now access local context in your editor and github.com to provide you with richer and more tailored responses.

As a developer, you can benefit from context passing when interacting with extensions. Passing context to extensions will continue to maintain security through permission controls set by your administrators and content exclusion rules.

Available contexts by development environment

Environment client.file client.selection github.repository github.current-url Additional contexts
Visual Studio Code ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ X Repository owner and branch
Visual Studio ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ X Repository owner and branch
github.com X X ✔️ ✔️ Repository information and other GitHub resources
GitHub Mobile X X X ✔️ X
JetBrains IDEs X X X X X

Local context is not passed to extensions by default.

Requirements for developers

  • Access to GitHub Copilot Extensions
  • Admin authorization to install on organization-owned repos

Requirements for builders

  • Explicit requests to receive editor context, configured in your GitHub app settings
  • Update your APIs to handle new reference types and account for certain references only being available in certain contexts

Connect with our community in our Discussion Forum, or relay your feedback here.

GitHub Skyline CLI extension now available

Bring your GitHub contributions to life with the new GitHub Skyline CLI extension – visualize, customize, and 3D print your journey in open source, all from the command line!

GitHub CLI Skyline extension in action showing a user's contributions in glorious ASCII art.

Go
@chrisreddington
@martinwoodward
@leereilly
@jasonlong

🛠️ Features

  • Binary STL generation: Turn your contribution data into 3D-printed works of art.
  • Customizable year selection: Show off a single year or flex with multi-year masterpieces.
  • Automatic authentication: Uses your GitHub credentials or specify another user.
  • ASCII art previews: See your contribution skyline before it’s immortalized IRL.

💻 Quick Start

If you already have GitHub CLI installed, installation is as easy as:

gh extension install github/gh-skyline

Generate a skyline:

gh skyline --year 2024

Generate a skyline for a specific user and year range:

gh skyline –-user chrisreddington --year 2014-2024

Start printing your GitHub journey in 3D glory. Your desk, your shelf, and your ego will thank you 😎

 

An example of a 3D Printed GitHub Skyline

 

🌟 Did you know: If you don’t have a 3D printer, you can upload STL files to GitHub and see them rendered directly in your browser:

Share your virtual | IRL skylines with #GitHubSkyline on social or in the community discussion – we can’t wait to see your creations!

See more

Copilot Workspace Changelog (December 6th, 2024)

As you may have seen in Discord a few weeks ago, Copilot Workspace is graduating! It is a very exciting time, and also a time of change. So before getting into the product changes from this week, we want to highlight a few logistical changes, because everyone loves logistics 💪

Changelog location: All future Copilot Workspace changelogs will be posted here, rather than in the user manual repository. Since you’re already reading this week’s changelog here, you’re ahead of the curve. Great work!

How to provide feedback: We are also transitioning from the current Discord to a GitHub Discussion as the primary place for feedback and discussions around Copilot Workspace. We will still be available in Discord, but posting in the discussion will ensure we see your feedback sooner.

Okay, now onto the product updates for this week! 🎉

Image Preview Support

Building on recent improvements to file and image support, you can now preview images directly in the Workspace editor. Selecting an image from the file tree will now display a full preview of the image, letting you open a preview tab directly within the editor.

copilot workspace with a rendered image in the open tab

Simplifying the Experience

Since our last changes dropped we have invested time into streamlining the Workspace experience, saving you clicks, headaches, and frustration.

Reducing Action Button Clicks

We updated the primary action button such that secondary actions available in the dropdown no longer require a second click of the primary button – when you select an action it will immediately take effect.

the copilot workspace primary action button dropdown

Consolidating the Plan Action Buttons

We have also consolidated plan action buttons like Regenerate and Add File to a kebab menu.

Before:
the previous copilot workspace planning experience

After:
the updated planning experience with actions under a kebab menu

VS Code Extension Updates

  • Stale View Fix: Resolved an issue where stale view states were retained in certain views.
  • Push to Branch / PR Creation Fix: Fixed failures when merging into an existing branch with updates to the same files.
  • Binary Detection Fix: Addressed a false positive issue where folders were incorrectly flagged as binary after session syncing stopped.
  • Enhanced Session List: Sessions now appear earlier in their lifecycle in the session list, supporting the new brainstorming feature in VS Code.
  • Error Message Visibility: Resolved cases where certain error messages did not display.
See more
View all changes