GitHub Copilot Extensions Explained

GitHub Copilot Extensions, available in a limited public beta, allow third parties to extend the capabilities of GitHub Copilot to work with their offerings. Extensions can generate responses based on third-party documentation, and they can execute tasks in third-party components and services. Additionally, organizations can build private extensions for internal use.

Examples of extensions include the following:

• View the status of a deployment (using the Octopus extension)
• Interact with databases (using the DataStax extension)
• Resolve pipeline issues (using the Sentry extension)
• Determine the best service to use (using the Azure extension, which is called GitHub Copilot for Azure).

Installed extensions are accessed by prefixing a prompt with @extension-name in the GitHub Copilot chat pane.

The GitHub Marketplace provides a section that lets third parties advertise extension offerings where they can be discovered and downloaded by customers.

Initial partners providing extensions include DataStax, Docker, LambdaTest, Sentry, Octopus, Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft Teams.