GitHub Copilot

by GitHub (Microsoft) — the most widely used AI coding assistant

GitHub Copilot is the original mainstream AI coding assistant, used by over 1.8 million developers. It integrates into VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, Vim/Neovim, and GitHub.com. It offers inline completions, a chat panel with slash commands, and Copilot Workspace for agentic PR-level tasks.

Made by

GitHub / Microsoft

Individual

$10/month

Business

$19/user/month

Free tier

Students & OSS

Works in

VS Code, JetBrains, Vim

GPT-4o + Claude

⚡ Install & Setup (VS Code)

Get a Copilot subscription

Go to github.com/features/copilot → Start free trial (30 days free). Students: apply at github.com/education for free access.

Install the extensions

VS Code Extensions → search "GitHub Copilot" → install it. Then search "GitHub Copilot Chat" and install that too (separate extension).

VS Code will prompt you to sign in with GitHub. Authorize in the browser. Your subscription activates automatically.

Configure your model

Copilot Settings → Model → choose GPT-4o (default), Claude 3.5 Sonnet, or o3-mini. You can switch per task.

Enable Copilot Edits (optional)

View → Copilot Edits to enable multi-file agentic editing. This is Copilot's answer to Cursor Composer.

🚀 Core Features & How to Use Them

① Inline Completions

Start typing — ghost text appears. Tab to accept, Esc to dismiss, Alt+] to see next suggestion.

# fetch user data with retry logic and exponential backoff
async def fetch_user(user_id: str):
# ← Copilot writes the full implementation

② Chat Panel Slash Commands

/explain

Explain selected code in plain English

/fix

Find and fix a bug in selection

/tests

Generate unit tests for selection

/doc

Add JSDoc/docstring comments

/optimize

Suggest performance improvements

/new

Scaffold a new file or component

③ Copilot Edits (Multi-File Agentic Mode)

View → Copilot Edits → describe a task spanning multiple files:

"Add rate limiting to all POST endpoints. Use express-rate-limit with 100 requests per 15 minutes per IP. Add the middleware in app.ts."

Copilot Edits plans the changes, shows diffs across files, and lets you review and accept each one.

⌨️ Key Shortcuts

Accept suggestionTab

Next suggestionAlt+]

Previous suggestionAlt+[

Open Chat panelCtrl+Cmd+I (Mac)

Inline EditCmd+I / Ctrl+I

Trigger suggestionAlt+\

💡 Pro Tips

Free for students: Verify at github.com/education — includes Copilot + other GitHub Pro features
Use @workspace in chat to ask about your entire project: "@workspace where do we handle auth?"
Copilot works in JetBrains (IntelliJ, WebStorm, PyCharm) — install from the JetBrains Marketplace
Switch models per task: use Claude Sonnet for analysis, GPT-4o for coding, o3-mini for math
Add a .github/copilot-instructions.md file to set project-wide instructions for Copilot

→ Compare: Cursor → Compare: Windsurf → Compare: Claude Code CLI