Building with GitHub Copilot

The Three Modes of Interaction

When you open the chat panel, you have three modes of interaction:

• Ask
• Edit
• Agent

Based on what you want to achieve, you can choose the appropriate mode by selecting it from the dropdown menu in the prompt box.

The Ask Mode

Historically, this was the first mode available when GitHub Copilot Chat was in its early stages. It's a simple chat interface where you can ask questions and get answers. To add context, you can highlight code snippets in the editor before asking your question.

For example, if you highlight the second code block below and ask, "Can you explain this code?" or "Are there any other exceptions I should handle?", Copilot will provide an explanation of the selected code snippet and not the whole file, even if it could take some context from it.

import http.server
import socketserver

PORT = 8000


class SimpleHTTPRequestHandler(http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler):
    def do_GET(self):
        # Logs the request's path to the console
        print(f"GET request for {self.path}")
        # Call the superclass method to actually serve the request
        super().do_GET()


# Set up the HTTP server
with socketserver.TCPServer(("", PORT), SimpleHTTPRequestHandler) as httpd:
    print("Serving at port", PORT)
    try: