Microsoft-owned GitHub has announced the limited public beta release of GitHub Copilot Chat for enterprise customers and organizations. This release brings a context-aware conversational coding assistant into Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code development environments.
GitHub launched the chatbot as a part of the Copilot X initiative to extend its code completion tool to more use cases back in March. Up until now, GitHub Copilot Chat was only available through a private preview program. The feature allows developers to interact with the chatbot with natural language commands.
With GitHub Copilot Chat, developers can ask specific coding questions as well as troubleshoot errors and bugs. It can also provide code analysis and suggest remediations to fix security issues in code. GitHub highlighted that the chatbot should help to reduce the amount of time previously required to build applications and debug codebases.
“This new evolution turns GitHub Copilot into a context-aware conversational assistant right in the IDE, allowing developers to execute some of the most complex tasks with simple prompts. Every developer on your team, from the least to the most experienced, will be able to build entire applications or debug vast arrays of code in a matter of minutes instead of a matter of days,” said Mario Rodriguez, Vice President of Product for GitHub.
How to sign up for GitHub Copilot Chat beta
To get started, GitHub Copilot for Business customers will need to sign up for the beta program on the official website. The conversational coding assistant will be available via Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio extensions.
In addition to Copilot Chat, GitHub is working on other Copilot X features, including a new voice-based interaction system. The AI-powered feature will allow users to write code and perform other tasks with voice commands. However, GitHub has yet to provide a release timeline.