GitHub Copilot gets extensions

Build is Microsoft’s largest developer conference and of course, it’s all about AI this year. So it’s no surprise that GitHub’s Copilot, GitHub’s “AI pair programming tool,” is taking center stage for a bit today with the launch of Copilot Extension. As the name suggests, Copilot Extensions allow developers to extend Copilot with third-party skills.

Today’s launch partners cover a wide variety of skills. They include DataStax, Docker, LambdaTest, LaunchDarkly, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft Azure and Teams, MongoDB, Octopus Deploy, Pangea, Pinecone, Product Science, ReadMe, Sentry and Stripe.

“Our goal: make GitHub Copilot the most integrated, powerful, intelligent AI platform there is — with unlimited possibilities to accelerate human progress,” said GitHub’s SVP of Product Mario Rodriguez. “Programming in natural language will continue to lower the barrier to entry for anyone who wants to build software. Today, we are closer to a future where one billion people can build on GitHub, with Copilot as an intelligent platform that integrates with any tool in the developer tech stack, entirely in natural language.”

These extensions will live in the GitHub Marketplace, but developers will also be able to create their own private extensions to integrate with their internal systems and APIs.

The idea here, of course, is to help developers stay in their flow and interact with these systems in natural language and without having to switch context. For some partners, that means accessing their documentation in Copilot, while for others, it includes taking actions. Users of the Octopus deployment tool, for example, will be able to use an extension to check on the state of their deployments, while Sentry users will be able to resolve issues with their deployment pipelines in natural language and DataStax users will be able to interact with their databases.

As of now, Copilot Extensions are in private preview.

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