Introducing GitHub Copilot Extensions: Unlocking unlimited possibilities with our ecosystem of partners

Today, we’re introducing GitHub Copilot Extensions to bring the world’s knowledge into the most widely adopted AI developer tool. Through a growing partner ecosystem, Copilot Extensions enables developers to build and deploy to the cloud in their natural language with their preferred tools and services, all without leaving the IDE or GitHub.com. With Copilot and now Copilot Extensions, developers can stay in the flow longer, uplevel their skills, and innovate faster.

We’re starting with GitHub Copilot Extensions from DataStax, Docker, LambdaTest, LaunchDarkly, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft Azure and Teams, MongoDB, Octopus Deploy, Pangea, Pinecone, Product Science, ReadMe, Sentry, and Stripe. Extensions are supported in GitHub Copilot Chat on GitHub.com, Visual Studio, as well as VS Code.

While the GitHub Marketplace will offer extensions that are open to all, organizations can also create private Copilot Extensions for their homegrown developer tooling, making the capabilities from an internal library of APIs or the knowledge from a custom monitoring system only a conversation away.

How it works: GitHub Copilot Extensions in action

Imagine you’re a developer who just got paged on an incident for a database-related error. You’re trying to get context of the issue from a variety of tools. It could be from a GitHub issue or audit logs in DataStax. With enough context, you start troubleshooting what could be the cause, going to tools like Sentry for error monitoring to learn more. Then, you have to figure out a solution, apply the fix, and then deploy with Azure. In this scenario, there is a lot of context-switching.

Copilot Extensions bring this whole process together. From GitHub Copilot Chat, you can now easily invoke all of these tools to get context, perform actions, and generate files and pull requests—accelerating workflows across more tools.

“The LaunchDarkly extension for GitHub Copilot integrates directly where teams are already building software. With it, developers can access documentation and best practices, right alongside their code. Minimize context switching, maintain flow state, and accelerate software delivery—all from one place,” said Cody De Arkland, Product Incubation, LaunchDarkly.

With the DataStax extension, you can interact with databases and build applications with AstraDB:

With the Octopus extension, you can view the status of your deployments:

And, with the Sentry extension, you can resolve pipeline issues in natural language:

“This is the future of software development, where developers spend less time searching and more time building. Working in natural language, they can write code, retrieve data, and solve problems, all using a single intuitive workflow,” said Tillman Elser, Engineering Manager at Sentry.

AI meets cloud with GitHub Copilot for Azure

Microsoft’s extension, GitHub Copilot for Azure, showcases just how much GitHub Copilot can push development velocity with natural language. By calling on GitHub Copilot for Azure right in Copilot Chat, developers get answers to their questions about Azure—anything from choosing an Azure service to running a React app to selecting the best Azure database to use with Django. And, when it’s time to deploy, GitHub Copilot for Azure guides developers through the steps for a successful launch.

Access to the GitHub Copilot for Azure preview is currently limited and offered through Microsoft directly. Sign up here.

Getting started

Today’s announcement is a sneak peek of what’s to come. Once invited, users can access Copilot Extensions from DataStax, Docker, Lambda Test, LaunchDarkly, McKinsey & Company, Octopus Deploy, Pangea, Pinecone, Product Science, ReadMe, Sentry, and Teams Toolkit on the GitHub Marketplace. In the coming weeks, all users will be able to access extensions from Stripe, MongoDB, and Microsoft (including Teams Toolkit and Microsoft 365) on Visual Studio Marketplace for VSCode as well.

The future of software development for individuals and organizations

Whether you’re a potential partner or an organization looking to build your own private extension, Copilot Extensions put the power to customize every aspect of the build experience at your fingertips—and expand your access to the tools that drive productivity, innovation, and joy. Your participation and creativity will only increase Copilot’s functionality and value for all.

Today is just the starting point. Over the coming months, we’ll expand this ecosystem through the hundreds of partners that have already signed up for the Copilot Partner Program. This means even more global knowledge at developers’ fingertips to build and innovate with ease.

Our goal: make GitHub Copilot the most integrated, powerful, intelligent AI platform there is—with unlimited possibilities to accelerate human progress. Programming in natural language will continue to lower the barrier to entry for anyone who wants to build software. Today, we are closer to a future where one billion people can build on GitHub, with Copilot as an intelligent platform that integrates with any tool in the developer tech stack, entirely in natural language.

Written by

Mario Rodriguez

@mariorod