Copilot in GitHub.com Feedback

[eshwer]

Looking for Product Feedback

Copilot in GitHub.com is now available to Copilot Individual and Business users. And for those with access a preview of OpenAI o1-preview and o1-mini is coming soon to GitHub.com too.

How to access Copilot in GitHub.com

If you're part of an organization with Copilot Enterprise, you're already familiar with these features. For those on Copilot Individual or Copilot Business plans, see below on how to get access to Copilot in GitHub.com.

• For Copilot Individual users: If you have a license for Copilot Individual, you're all set! Visit github.com and you'll see the Copilot icon or go directly to github.com/copilot.
• For Copilot Business users: If you have a Copilot Business license through an organization, you'll need to ask your organization administrator to enable Copilot in GitHub.com. Learn how to do this.

[adamcstephens]

I have an individual license, but I can't seem to disable this feature. How can I remove Copilot buttons and search integrations? I disabled the preview feature, but no difference.

[meneguzzi]

Bump this one. I want no copilot whatsoever in any of my repositories. But it seems, regardless of my choice, people can now ask copilot to "explain" code in my repo. In my experience, ChatBots are actually counterproductive for anything other that stuff you'd find by googling anyway. Moreover, I have a blanket robots.txt that is meant to deny access to my code to all chatbots, but obviously GitHub is ignoring this.

[andreszs]

@meneguzzi Agreed. Instead of adding dubious AI that nobody asked for they could instead add the missing CHANGE LOG tab to the repositories, which would be easy and very helpful to get rid of change logs from READMEs once and for all.

[abdullah-alfa57]

Why does the user not want to use GitHub Copilot in their repositories?

[herman16]

please help me i just want to ask if github can develop my program made in visual basic 6.0 on the website. Thank you very much for answering my question. ang how much to develop my program?

[l4u532]

It is unclear to me if this will solely be enabled for the org members whom we have enabled CoPilot for, and whether there are any other pricing implications for enabling this. Kindly elaborate :)

[andreszs]

The fact that it's a Microsoft product you are required a license to use it is more than enough to avoid it like the plague.

[diachromemis]

Can you provide more details on whether CoPilot will only be accessible to the organization members for whom it has been enabled, and if there are any additional costs or pricing changes associated with enabling this feature?

[nathanheffley]

Could the Single sign-on to see results in the [ORG] organization note be dismissible? Or an option somewhere to hide it? I'm not SSO'd on any of my personal devices which is where I mostly use Copilot.

[zwalden]

Everytime I try to have the copilot chat actually do something (e.g, make a PR), it bombs out.

It keeps asking me to click on "Index Repository", which there is no such button, so I tell the bot that. The bot says, no worries, I can index for you, and that i'm indexed. Only to tell me that i'm not indexed and I need to click on index repositroy on subsequent interaction.
When opening a new prompt (after deleting all existing prompts I had been toying with) -- I now see the green button to "index"

[zwalden]

I asked it to do a couple of things; but primarily create PRs, is when I seen that specific error!

[eshwer]

Ah yes, Copilot in GitHub.com cannot do any "tasks" for you today. It primarily has awareness of the pages you are on and can answer questions about them.

But, if that is something you are interested in it being able to do, I will track it as feedback!

[zwalden]

Ahh.. I totally misunderstood this feature (probably getting ahead of myself more than the marketing, I'd wager) -- so this is strictly for communicating with llm regarding the repository? I seen folks suggesting this could help make bug PRs and stuff, so clearly I missed the memo here !

So this isn't much different then working with copilot chat in the IDE?

[eshwer]

Correct

[C1ph3rPhr3ak]

Every time I try to ask Copilot a question, it tells me that the answer goes against community standards. So.... It is unable to answer any question I have about my coding?

[itbeard]

Hey folks,
Is it possible to obtain a license as an open-source contributor? I canceled my paid Copilot subscription one month ago (I did not use Copilot last month because I switched to Cursor IDE), but now I want to try this new feature.

[Hamzaqtr-313]

No but I am trying

[cipacera]

Are you interested in the new features of Copilot that the user mentioned?

[gpertea]

I thought I can ask specific function questions about a code base using Copilot. But even though it apparently indexed the repository I was exploring, it started blatantly hallucinating non-existent functions and functionality (unacceptable!), while then also complaining that I should do something that not only seemed contradictory to the indexing message below, but the directions did not make much sense - how to confirm the prompt in copilot chat, I was there, I just did it.. So, was it indexed or not?

[eshwer]

@gpertea if you ask the same question to the smaller assistive chat (accessed by screenshotted button) -- is the response quality similar?

[eshwer]

Also it looks like the referenced repo is indexed!

[gustavomassa]

Copilot is having issues listing/reading files inside an organization. I'm a member of that organization and I have full access and a Copilot Individual license.

What I'm trying to do:

• Search for repositories inside that organization that have a "-xyz" suffix
• Based on the results, find all repositories missing the file "example.yaml"

Some of the errors returned by Copilot:
I was unable to retrieve the file list due to a limitation in the functions available to me
I don't have the capability to directly list the files inside a repository

[eshwer]

These two specific use cases are not well supported today. The opposite of both are though! For example:

• you should be able to search for repos starting with "abc-"
• you should be able to search for files within repos

[eshwer]

I did put this on our backlog to research and add support for, so thank you for reporting!

[wioniqle-q]

I cannot delete indexed project indexing

[eshwer]

Is this on the smaller assisted chat on the right of the page or in github.com/copilot?

[wioniqle-q]

Yes

[Predidit]

I can't find the button to delete index. I telled copilot to delete index, and copilot said he met an error when progressing delete.

[akiselev]

The instructions for semantic indexing are unclear:

What does that mean? What prompt do I need to confirm to get my codebase indexed?

---

On a public repo (KDAB/cxx-qt) I get the following error when asking "What does this repository do?":

---

When asking "Can you tell me about this repository?" (in a private repo), it depends way too much on the README. For example, if you don't delete or update the readme from some skeleton/template you used to initialize the repo, Copilot Chat will use that as the basis for the answer, even if the repo has completely diverged from the readme.

[eshwer]

What does that mean? What prompt do I need to confirm to get my codebase indexed?
-The prompt here is in reference to the Green "Index this Repo" button you may see in the the chat box. You can see a screenshot in our docs here.
On a public repo (KDAB/cxx-qt) I get the following error when asking "What does this repository do?":

• Looks like you uncovered a bug! Thank you! Our team is working to resolve this but if you try again, it should behave now! If not, let me know.

Re: you last point of feedback about the README - that's super helpful feedback! I share it back with the team. We tend to be a bit non-deterministic with this question so I've seen a bit of variety when that question is called.

[ArtemGoutsoul]

It would be nice if the conversation list was synchronized across sessions, both browser and mobile and eventually hopefully extensions like the PhpStorm Copilot plugin.

[eshwer]

Yeah that's a great point! I'll share this feedback back to the team!

[TheCedarPrince]

I don't want to be too much a nuisance but would it be possible to disable or hide Copilot completely from my interface? Thanks!

[sethmlarson]

The addition of Copilot where the notifications button previously was is not a welcome change. This might seem like a nitpick, but you're throwing away years of muscle memory just to push this brand new product. There are already 3 mentions of Copilot in the UI when I open github.com, could 2 or god-forbid, 1 of those locations suffice?

[Mogost]

This! In fact, this comment is one of the most valuable!

[eshwer]

We have moved it!

[jlleblanc]

I am failing to understand what this product offers beyond what you can already do with Copilot chat in VS Code. Even after indexing one of my repositories, I am getting function errors on at least every other response I get back.

When I finally got back a response for one of the tasks I had it do (generate a sitemap.xml file), I asked it to create a pull request. This was met with “sorry, can’t create branches or pull requests.”

🤷

[eshwer]

Makes sense and definitely aligned to a future we envision!

[tedsecretsource]

Isn't it true that this version of copilot is more of a RAG solution while Copilot in VS Code simply uses the currently active document for context?

[eshwer]

Sort of, that used to be the case but we've actually shipped @github to VS Code which supports the same functionality as chat in github.com. Check out the changelog here.

[tedsecretsource]

OMG that's crazy awesome. Do I need to index the repo in order to be able to use @github? If not, what is the benefit of indexing?

[eshwer]

I don't believe you need to index the repo to use @github -- indexing is specifically helpful for semantic code search like when you aren't sure the exact name of a function or symbol (see docs)

[hugovk]

Please remove (or add an option to remove) the floating button at the bottom right of every page:

It's sometimes in the way of other buttons, like the comment button right now, especially on mobile.

[eshwer]

If you open the panel and then select the ellispsis, a dropdown appears and you can hide the button.

[corneliusroemer]

It doesn't have access to issues but it doesn't admit it either, just replying with files that it found. You should definitely index issues as well. The current issue search is a pain, it's where LLMs could shine:

corneliusroemer
2 minutes ago
is there an issue that talked about problems with submission? something like there's a maximum that we support

Copilot
2 minutes ago
There are no issues in the repository that mention problems with submission or a maximum limit.

corneliusroemer
2 minutes ago
are you sure? is there no limit on how many sequences one can submit? no crash? nothing been reported?

Copilot
1 minute ago
7 references
There are mentions of submission limits and crashes in the following files within the repository:

[ena-submission-deployment.yaml](https://github.com/loculus-project/loculus/blob/da17da5120b46bfe25858c062f1795d4deb84987/kubernetes/loculus/templates/ena-submission-deployment.yaml)
[SubmissionDatabaseService.kt](https://github.com/loculus-project/loculus/blob/da17da5120b46bfe25858c062f1795d4deb84987/backend/src/main/kotlin/org/loculus/backend/service/submission/SubmissionDatabaseService.kt)
[SubmitModel.kt](https://github.com/loculus-project/loculus/blob/da17da5120b46bfe25858c062f1795d4deb84987/backend/src/main/kotlin/org/loculus/backend/model/SubmitModel.kt)
You can explore more details by following the links to these files.

corneliusroemer
1 minute ago
i mean issues!

Copilot
1 minute ago
I wasn't able to find specific issues mentioning submission limits or crashes in the repository. You can explore the issues directly [here](https://github.com/loculus-project/loculus/issues).

corneliusroemer
1 minute ago
nothign about HTTP 500 errors? or timeouts?

Copilot
1 minute ago
12 references
I found several references to HTTP 500 errors and timeouts in the repository. You can explore them in the following files:

[LapisClient.ts](https://github.com/loculus-project/loculus/blob/da17da5120b46bfe25858c062f1795d4deb84987/website/src/services/lapisClient.ts)
[CrossRefService.kt](https://github.com/loculus-project/loculus/blob/da17da5120b46bfe25858c062f1795d4deb84987/backend/src/main/kotlin/org/loculus/backend/service/crossref/CrossRefService.kt)
[getOrganismStatistics.ts](https://github.com/loculus-project/loculus/blob/da17da5120b46bfe25858c062f1795d4deb84987/website/src/components/IndexPage/getOrganismStatistics.ts)
These results may be incomplete. You can view more results in the GitHub UI by performing a code search.

[arfon]

@corneliusroemer - was this in VS Code or using Copilot on GitHub.com? Issues are definitely a GitHub content type that Copilot is designed to interact with – we agree there's lots of opportunity here!

[corneliusroemer]

@arfon this was directly on GitHub, not in a workspace, just the standard bot icon, does that make sense?

[yasharth-0910]

Hello, I was trying to use copilot but suddenly i got the following message "You’re not authorized to use Copilot."

[arfon]

@yasharth-0910 – did this issue resolve?

[yasharth-0910]

Yes, Issue is resolved👍

[Faazlaeeq]

Will copilot will get any better to compete with claude AI. It still write whole file code in response instead of writing only relative code to be changes or added. I tried prompted with this instruction but still no success.

[lucasrivoiro]

Hello,

I would like to suggest a new feature for GitHub Copilot. Currently, Copilot generates pull request titles and descriptions in English only. It would be highly beneficial to support multiple languages, including Portuguese, to accommodate a broader range of users and improve accessibility.

Thank you for considering this suggestion.

Best regards!

[Sam15828558]

yes good idea, i dont speak mucho english! ;)

[arfon]

Have you looked at Custom Instructions in VS Code @lucasrivoiro ? We're looking to bring something similar to Copilot in GitHub.com too and I'd love to hear if you're able to customize your Copilot experience well using these instructions in the editor.

[thecatfix]

Love the idea but the execution isn't quite there.
I am a noob so do not pass judgement on my lack of knowledge for Oauth apps, fine grain tokens and personal access tokens. I was hoping that Github Copilot would teach and help me figure this out.

My script in the application called Drafts would post material from Drafts to Gist. It was freaking awesome until the token expired. So i had to dig around to find out why and where I fix the issue.

The github UI for settings can take hours to understand and I was hoping that this would be helpful in understanding tokens, versus fine grain tokens versus Oauth applications.
The explanations were a bit vague and the code was not correct (i need to dig in)

But heres the problem. This chat will lead you down a rabbit hole for hours if u don't have the best prompt. Here were my results.

Should I be doing this as an O off app or using my personal access token or should I be doing the son >of fine grained token. What is the difference between all these?

Copilot:
Here are the differences between the options:

OAuth App: Best for applications that need to access resources on behalf of users. It provides user->specific permissions and can be used for more complex integrations.
Personal Access Token (PAT): A simple way to access your own resources. It has predefined scopes and is suitable for personal automation scripts or accessing your own repositories.
Fine-grained Personal Access Tokens: More secure and customizable compared to PATs. They allow you to >specify granular permissions and access controls.
For creating GitHub Gists via a script, using a regular or fine-grained PAT with "gist" scope is sufficient and straightforward.

Me
So if I am using an application called Drafts, which is a text editing application, and I would like >to post from this application to gist.
How would I set this up? Would it be an oh author app or personal access token?

Copilot
For a simple setup >where you want to post from the Drafts application >to GitHub Gist, using a >Personal Access Token >>(PAT) is the most straightforward approach.
Here is how you can set it up:

Generate a Personal Access Token (PAT):

Go to GitHub Token Settings.
Click on "Generate new token".
Give your token a descriptive name.
Select the "gist" scope.
Generate the token and copy it.
Configure Drafts to Use the Token:

In your Drafts script, add the code to prompt for and use the PAT as shown in the previous examples.
Ensure that the token is securely stored and not hard-coded in the script.
Use the Token in Your Script:

When running the script, enter the newly generated PAT when prompted.
Here's an example script for Drafts:

JavaScript
/* Create public Gist with draft content on GitHub

• When first run, you will be prompted for a personal API token
• Personal tokens can be generated at: https://github.com/settings/tokens
• The token used should have "gist" scope permissions
  */

// BEGIN config
let content = draft.content; // content of the Gist
let fileName = "content.md"; // file name
let isPublic = true; // should this be a public Gist
// END config 

// do credential auth to get a token from the user.
let auth = () => {
    let cred = Credential.create("GitHub Gist", "Enter your GitHub Personal Access Token with >'gist' scope permissions.");
    cred.addTextField("Token", "");
    if (cred.authorize()) {
        return cred.getValue("Token");
    }
    else {
        return false;
    }
}

let token = auth();
if (token) {
    let http = HTTP.create();

    let data = {
        "description": "Gist from Drafts",
        "public": isPublic,
        "files": {}
    };
    data["files"][fileName] = {
        "content": content
    }

    let settings = {
        "url": "https://api.github.com/gists",
        "method": "POST",
        "headers": { "Authorization": `Bearer ${token}` },
        "data": data
    };

    let response = http.request(settings);
    if (response.statusCode == 201) {
        let responseData = JSON.parse(response.responseText);
        let gistURL = responseData.html_url;

        console.log(responseData);
        console.log(gistURL);
        console.log("Gist created");
        app.setClipboard(gistURL);

        let p = Prompt.create();
        p.title = "Gist created"
        p.message = "Gist created and URL placed in the clipboard."
        p.addButton("Open in Safari");

        if (p.show()) {
            if (p.buttonPressed == "Open in Safari") {
                app.openURL(gistURL);
            }
        }
    } else {
        console.log(`Error: ${response.statusCode}`);
        console.log(response.responseText);
        let errorPrompt = Prompt.create();
        errorPrompt.title = "Error Creating Gist";
        errorPrompt.message = `There was an error creating the Gist. Status Code: ${response.statusCode}. Response: ${response.responseText}`;
        errorPrompt.addButton("OK");
        errorPrompt.show();
        context.fail();
    }
} else {
    context.cancel();
}

This script will prompt you to enter your PAT when it runs, and then use that token to create a Gist with the content from Drafts.

[icebeam7]

Hello, is this expected behavior? :)

The referenced file contains information about products, and despite rightfully telling me that there's no information about "Bone density", it still proceeded to give me a definition about it.

Similar thing happened when I asked about hinking as a healthy activity.

Maybe it assumes the repository contains only code.

Funny :)

[trusktr]

Please allow owners of repositories to instruct GitHub Copilot to remember certain information. For example, when I'm asking Copilot to show me an example of how to use something, and it is incorrect, I should be able to (as owner of the repo) tell Copilot how to do it correctly, and instruct Copilot to remember this information for anyone else who may visit the repo.

This will be really useful in making Copilot useful for users of libraries because the sources of truth for information is stated by owners of the repos.

Basically this would allow a repo owner to "teach" a single person who can then teach all other users. This would be incredibly powerful.

From this, GitHub Copilot could even help generate documentation by organizing ideas from conversations into meaningful output, including generating new outputs that it can infer from sources of truth.

And best of all, the people that could be tasked with using GitHub Copilot to generate docs could be other people besides the owner, who can make pull requests that are accurate based on derivatives of owners' truths.

[okineadev]

Please allow owners of repositories to instruct GitHub Copilot to remember certain information. For example, when I'm asking Copilot to show me an example of how to use something, and it is incorrect, I should be able to (as owner of the repo) tell Copilot how to do it correctly, and instruct Copilot to remember this information for anyone else who may visit the repo.

This will be really useful in making Copilot useful for users of libraries because the sources of truth for information is stated by owners of the repos.

Basically this would allow a repo owner to "teach" a single person who can then teach all other users. This would be incredibly powerful.

From this, GitHub Copilot could even help generate documentation by organizing ideas from conversations into meaningful output, including generating new outputs that it can infer from sources of truth.

And best of all, the people that could be tasked with using GitHub Copilot to generate docs could be other people besides the owner, who can make pull requests that are accurate based on derivatives of owners' truths.

Just use copilot-instructions.md file in the .github folder..

[arfon]

@okineadev – I was coming to say the same thing:

Have you looked at Custom Instructions in VS Code? We're looking to bring something similar to Copilot in GitHub.com too and I'd love to hear if you're able to customize your Copilot experience well using these instructions in the editor.

/ cc @khenckel @elliebennett

[dansheerhealth]

It would be great to also index attached Wikis for any indexed repository. As of right now copilot is only able to point you to the wiki, not answer anything using it as a reference.

[arfon]

👍 yes, this would be useful I agree. / cc @khenckel

[lonasozo]

It would be great if it can index all files into a repo (that as it says, it do that) and help you with it, actually it just works fine on files that you directly open or that are available into a commit/pr, not on all project.

As it reply when I ask if it can access to all repo:
I don't have direct access to perform a complete indexing of the files in a repository. I can help you search for specific references or files if you provide more details.

[Nana-Kwame-bot]

It'll be nice If I can get copilot to generate the PR description using this format.

Description

Type of Change

• ✨ New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• 🛠️ Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• ❌ Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to change)
• 🧹 Code refactor
• ✅ Build configuration change
• 📝 Documentation
• 🗑️ Chore

[dsolteszopyn]

I asked copilot to create release notes summarizing the enhancements from all the commits since monday 12/2/2024 but its only able to retrieve 3 commits. This needs to be enhanced so we can ask questions about our repos, branches etc. How many commits did we have this week? Give develop counts for commits since the last release branch was created? The only thing useful at this point is just getting pr summary descriptions.

[uset82]

I believe we need more assistance with settings. It would be great if Copilot could navigate to our settings and handle the setup automatically to help us work faster. For example, I was trying to connect Devin to my Visual Studio, but it kept crashing. Copilot suggested creating a personal access token (classic) on GitHub and using it in Visual Studio Code for authentication. That was very clever, especially since even Devin's customer service couldn't help. However, there are still too many steps required to connect everything. Simplifying this process would be a huge improvement.

[pleabargain]

Looking for Product Feedback

copilot doesn't see my repo

ollama5test repo exists (look left)
copilot doesn't see it :(

[hichemfantar]

I have an issue with auto focus on the AI Ask a question input box causes zoom-in on ios

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/146606