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๐Ÿ™
AI Coding Assistant$10/month ยท Free for Students

GitHub Copilot

by GitHub (Microsoft) โ€” 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
Powered by
GPT-4o + Claude

โšก Install & Setup (VS Code)

1
Get a Copilot subscription
Go to github.com/features/copilot โ†’ Start free trial (30 days free). Students: apply at github.com/education for free access.
2
Install the extensions
VS Code Extensions โ†’ search "GitHub Copilot" โ†’ install it. Then search "GitHub Copilot Chat" and install that too (separate extension).
3
Sign in with GitHub
VS Code will prompt you to sign in with GitHub. Authorize in the browser. Your subscription activates automatically.
4
Configure your model
Copilot Settings โ†’ Model โ†’ choose GPT-4o (default), Claude 3.5 Sonnet, or o3-mini. You can switch per task.
5
Enable Copilot Edits (optional)
View โ†’ Copilot Edits to enable multi-file agentic editing. This is Copilot's answer to Cursor Composer.

๐Ÿš€ Core Features & How to Use Them

โ‘  Inline Completions

Start typing โ€” 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):
# โ† Copilot writes the full implementation
โ‘ก 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
โ‘ข Copilot Edits (Multi-File Agentic Mode)

View โ†’ Copilot Edits โ†’ 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.

โŒจ๏ธ Key Shortcuts

Accept suggestionTab
Next suggestionAlt+]
Previous suggestionAlt+[
Open Chat panelCtrl+Cmd+I (Mac)
Inline EditCmd+I / Ctrl+I
Trigger suggestionAlt+\

๐Ÿ’ก Pro Tips

  • Free for students: Verify at github.com/education โ€” 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) โ€” 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
โ†’ Compare: Cursorโ†’ Compare: Windsurfโ†’ Compare: Claude Code CLI