GitHub Copilot
AI coding assistant for IDE, terminal, and pull requests.
GitHub Copilot is profiled here as a Coding Assistant tool for engineering teams. Read about features, pricing, and how it compares to related options in the tools directory.
Description
GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant developed by GitHub and OpenAI, first released in 2021 and now part of Microsoft. It generates code completions, answers coding questions in chat, and runs autonomous agents that can plan, edit files, and open pull requests. The product spans inline autocomplete, IDE chat, terminal, GitHub.com, and mobile.
Inline code completions and next edit suggestions across VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Eclipse, Xcode, and Neovim
Copilot Chat for code questions, refactors, and explanations inside the IDE, web, mobile, and Windows Terminal
Agent mode that autonomously edits files, runs terminal commands, and iterates on errors with user approval
Coding agent that researches a repository, plans changes, and pushes commits to a branch when assigned a GitHub issue
Copilot CLI for terminal-based tasks installable through npm, Homebrew, WinGet, and curl
Multi-model selection covering OpenAI GPT, Anthropic Claude, xAI Grok, and Google Gemini
AI code review, pull request summaries, and commit message generation in GitHub and GitHub Desktop
Custom instructions and reusable prompt files for repository-specific conventions
Copilot Autofix for vulnerability remediation through GitHub Advanced Security
Multi-agent orchestration through Agent HQ for delegating tasks to Copilot, Claude, and Codex
Alternative tools
- Onlook
Open-source visual editor for React applications
- Bito
AI code review agent and in-editor coding assistant
- Sweep
AI autocomplete and coding agent built for JetBrains
- Zencoder
Repository-aware coding and unit-testing agents in your IDE
- Goose
Open-source local AI agent for engineering tasks
- Builder.io
Visual development platform that writes production frontend code