Larger context window, improved test generation, and more in VS Code’s Copilot Chat

Since last month’s upgrade to GPT-4o, we now increased the available Chat context, so you can reference larger files and have longer chat conversations with GitHub Copilot Chat in VS Code. Additionally, you can now click Attach Context in Inline and Quick Chat to add more relevant context to your queries.

This month’s release also brings the following improvements to Copilot Chat in VS Code:

• Easily generate tests using the Generate Tests using Copilot action or the /tests slash command. Copilot will now update and append tests to existing files or create a new test file if none exists. Learn more.
• Revisit previous chat sessions with the Show Chats button. Sessions now have AI-generated names and can be manually renamed. Entries are sorted by the date of the last request and grouped by date buckets. Learn more.
• Provide specifics on unsatisfactory Chat responses by selecting the Thumbs down button. A dropdown with detailed options helps you pick a problem type or report it as an issue to us, helping us improve Copilot. Learn more.

• Code Actions now have clearer names: Generate Tests using Copilot and Generate Documentation using Copilot. Just place the cursor on an identifier and choose the action. Learn more.

Experimental New Features

Experimental settings are available in VS Code to gather your feedback and influence the future development of Copilot. Share your thoughts in our issues.

• Define instructions for code generation (e.g., always use underscore for private field names) in settings or import from a file. Edit them in github.copilot.chat.experimental.codeGeneration.instructions, either as a user setting for yourself or as a workspace setting for your team. Learn more.

• Use recently seen or edited coding files as inline Chat context for more relevant suggestions. Enable via github.copilot.chat.experimental.temporalContext.enabled in VS Code. Learn more.

• Use the /startDebugging slash command to create a launch configuration and start debugging. Enable via github.copilot.advanced.startDebugging.experimental.enabled in VS Code. Learn more.

Check out the full release notes for VS Code’s August release (version 1.93) for more details and to learn more about the features in this release.