Copilot Chat gains pull request and issue awareness
Since GitHub Copilot Enterprise launched in February, Copilot Chat on GitHub.com has been able to search organization and public repositories with natural language, run web searches via Bing, and query knowledge base articles. The July update extends that context to more GitHub primitives: Copilot Chat can now answer questions about specific issues, commits, releases, pull requests, repositories, discussions, and files on any branch. The goal is to reduce time spent gathering project context before writing code.
Enterprise Copilot features land in VS Code and Visual Studio
Previously, Copilot Chat in the IDE could only answer questions about the currently active repository (via @workspace in VS Code or #solution in Visual Studio), and answering questions about other repositories required switching to GitHub.com. With the latest release, Copilot Enterprise features are available directly inside both VS Code and Visual Studio, meaning you no longer need to keep GitHub.com open in a browser tab.
Query knowledge bases without leaving the editor
In VS Code, typing @github #kb lets you select a knowledge base from a list. You can then ask natural-language questions about the Markdown files that are grouped into that knowledge base, which may span multiple repositories. Answers are scoped to the organization's standards and documentation, so suggestions come with context about your team's specific codebase. Visual Studio support for knowledge bases is coming soon.
Ask questions about any indexed repository
Typing @github in Copilot Chat now lets you ask questions about any repository indexed in GitHub, not just the one currently open. The conversation can be grounded in code from any repository in your organization, directly from the chat panel in VS Code or Visual Studio.
Web search inside the IDE
Adding #web alongside @github in Copilot Chat turns on web search powered by Bing within the IDE. That allows you to ask questions about recent frameworks, languages, and best practices—content that may have changed after the model's training cutoff—without switching contexts. GitHub says the next step is giving Copilot in the IDE awareness of other GitHub primitives, including pull requests, commits, releases, and discussions.
Chat interaction polish on GitHub.com
A few smaller changes are aimed at making chat sessions feel less static. Users can now type a follow-up message while the system is still generating a response, navigate through their message history, and stop an ongoing response mid-generation.
