About building Copilot Extensions

Learn about the development process for Copilot Extensions.

In this article

About Copilot Extensions

About building GitHub Copilot Extensions

About building Copilot-enabled Visual Studio Code extensions

Further reading

Note
GitHub Docs Version: Free, Pro, & Team
GitHub Copilot Extensions is in public preview and subject to change.

GitHub Copilot / Build Copilot Extensions / About building Extensions

About Copilot Extensions

Copilot Extensions are integrations that expand the functionality of Copilot Chat, allowing developers
to bring external tools, services, and custom behaviors into the Chat experience. You can use Copilot
Extensions to extend the capabilities of Copilot Chat in a variety of ways, including:

Querying documentation: A Copilot Extension can allow Copilot Chat to query a third-party
documentation service to find information about a specific topic.
AI-assisted coding: A Copilot Extension can use a third-party AI model to provide code
suggestions.
Data retrieval: A Copilot Extension can allow Copilot Chat to query a third-party data service to
retrieve information about a specific topic.
Action execution: A Copilot Extension can allow Copilot Chat to execute a specific action, such as
posting to a message board or updating a tracking item in an external system.

About building GitHub Copilot Extensions

GitHub Copilot Extensions are a type of Copilot Extension built with GitHub Apps. GitHub Copilot
Extensions are best suited for developers who want cross-platform compatibility and app
management and support from GitHub.

Supported clients and IDEs

Clients and IDEs GitHub Copilot Extensions support

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio

GitHub.com

GitHub Mobile

JetBrains IDEs

GitHub Codespaces

Vim/Neovim

Copilot in the CLI

Xcode

About visibility of GitHub Copilot Extensions

GitHub Copilot Extensions can be private, public and shareable, or public and listed on the GitHub
Marketplace. Which visibility option you choose will depend on your use case and the audience you
are targeting.

Private extensions are often preferred by large enterprises or companies that:

Want more customization and controls over data access
Need to integrate with a large volume of internal documents and databases
Have strict security policies making it difficult to authorize permissions for third-parties
Public extensions are suitable for:
Open-source projects
Collaborative development and use across organizations within an enterprise
Sharing your tool and getting feedback before publishing to the GitHub Marketplace
GitHub Marketplace extensions are ideal for third-parties that want to:
Offer their service to a broader audience
Integrate their tool into the developer workflow on GitHub and the IDE
Leverage the GitHub ecosystem to raise awareness for their product

About skillsets and agents

Skillsets and agents are the two ways to extend Copilot's capabilities and context through the Copilot
Extensibility Platform. They let you integrate external services and APIs into Copilot Chat, but each one
serves different use cases and offers different levels of control and complexity:

Skillsets are lightweight and streamlined, designed for developers who need Copilot to perform
specific tasks (e.g., data retrieval or simple operations) with minimal setup. They handle routing,
prompt crafting, function evaluation, and response generation automatically, making them ideal
for quick and straightforward integrations. For more information about skillsets, see About
Copilot skillsets.
 Agents are for complex integrations that need full control over how requests are processed and
responses are generated. They let you implement custom logic, integrate with other LLMs and/or
the Copilot API, manage conversation context, and handle all aspects of the user interaction.
While Agents require more engineering and maintenance, they offer maximum flexibility for
sophisticated workflows. For more information about agents, see About Copilot agents.

About context passing

Note

Context passing is in public preview and subject to change.

You can allow your Copilot Extension to receive context from the editor, such as the currently opened
file, by enabling the Read-only access level for the "Copilot Editor Context" permission in your GitHub
App settings. See step 10 of Configuring your GitHub App.

The GitHub Copilot Extensibility Platform automatically handles messaging when implicit and explicit
context is unavailable or unauthorized. To enable context passing, you are required to request
permissions from users. To enable context passing, you are required to:

Update your APIs to handle new reference types.

Request permissions from users. When requesting permissions, follow these best practices:
Clearly communicate what context you need and what you need it for.
Implement appropriate error handling for unavailable context that your own application
logic and API calls.
If context is unavailable, provide value where possible without this data.
Request only the minimum required permissions for your extension.

Context passing respects content exclusions, which refers to any files listed in your context exclusion
settings, including files that begin with . .

Resources for building GitHub Copilot Extensions

GitHub provides a comprehensive toolkit for extension builders, with code samples, a CLI debugging
tool, quickstart SDKs, and a user feedback repository. For more information, see the copilot-
extensions organization on GitHub.

Before creating your own GitHub Copilot Extension from scratch, you may want to explore an existing
Copilot agent, then integrate it with a GitHub App to see how it works. GitHub provides a few
example Copilot agents that you can clone and use as the basis for your own GitHub Copilot
Extension:

Blackbeard: A simple Copilot agent that responds to requests like a pirate, using Copilot's LLM
API and special system prompts. It is a good starting point for learning how to build a GitHub
Copilot Extension. For more information, see the Blackbeard Copilot Extension.

GitHub Models: A more complex Copilot agent that lets you ask about and interact with various
LLMs listed on the GitHub Marketplace from within Copilot Chat. For more information, see the
GitHub Models Copilot Extension.

Note
 GitHub Models are in public preview and subject to change. To request access, join the
waitlist.

Function calling: an example agent written in Go that demonstrates function calling and
confirmation dialogues. For more information, see the Function calling extension.

RAG extension: an example agent written in Go that demonstrates a simple implementation of

retrieval augmented generation. For more information, see the RAG extension.

Preview SDK: An SDK that simplifies the process of building GitHub Copilot Extensions by
handling request verification, response formatting, and API interactions. It allows builders to
focus on their extension's core functionality rather than boilerplate, by streamlining the
integration of tools, APIs, and data sources into Copilot Chat. For more information, see the
Preview SDK.

About building Copilot-enabled Visual Studio Code extensions

Note

The GitHub documentation focuses on building GitHub Copilot Extensions, not Copilot-enabled
Visual Studio Code extensions.

You can build a Copilot Extension that is exclusive and native to Visual Studio Code, called a Copilot-
enabled Visual Studio Code extensions. This option is best suited for developers who want to build
extensions that use VS Code-specific APIs and functionality, or extend existing VS Code extensions.

Also known as VS Code Chat extensions, Copilot-enabled Visual Studio Code extensions function
similarly to GitHub Copilot Extensions by extending the capabilities of Copilot Chat, with a few
notable differences:

VS Code Chat extensions are only usable in VS Code.

VS Code Chat extensions have more access to VS Code's features and APIs, allowing more editor-
specific interactions like accessing local workspace data, manipulating Visual Studio Code's
interface, and read/write access to local files.
VS Code Chat extensions are published to the VS Code Marketplace, not the GitHub Marketplace.
VS Code Chat extensions are local to the user's machine, and cannot be controlled by an
organization's policies.

For more information on Copilot-enabled Visual Studio Code extensions, see Chat extensions in the
Visual Studio Code documentation.

Further reading
Copilot Extensions Glossary

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