Chat extensions | Visual Studio Code Extension API

Visual Studio Code's Copilot Chat architecture enables extension authors to integrate with the GitHub Copilot Chat experience. A chat extension is a VS Code extension that uses the Chat extension API by contributing a Chat participant.

Chat participants are domain experts that can answer user queries within a specific domain. Participants can use different approaches to process a user query:

Participants can use the language model in a wide range of ways. Some participants only make use of the language model to get answers to custom prompts, for example the sample chat participant. Other participants are more advanced and act like autonomous agents that invoke multiple tools with the help of the language model. An example of such an advanced participant is the built-in @workspace that knows about your workspace and can answer questions about it. Internally, @workspace is powered by multiple tools: GitHub's knowledge graph, combined with semantic search, local code indexes, and VS Code's language services.

When a user explicitly mentions a @participant in their chat prompt, that prompt is forwarded to the extension that contributed that specific chat participant. The participant then uses a ResponseStream to respond to the request. To provide a smooth user experience, the Chat API is streaming-based. A ResponseStream can include:

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