Copilot Chat

Civis Studio includes a beta version of the open-source Copilot Chat extension. This extension can be used to code collaboratively with a Large Language Model (LLM). For example, you can converse with the LLM to learn more about a codebase, to debug issues, or to implement a new feature.

Chat with Copilot in Ask Mode to learn more about your code and get quick suggestions about improvements or bug fixes. Edit Mode enables the AI to make suggestions to your files directly for you to review. Agent Mode allows for autonomous code creation and interactions with the Civis API via the Civis MCP server. Note: The Copilot Chat extension enables an AI coding chat window, not AI-powered code completion.

Getting Started

1. Enable GitHub Copilot

You must have your own Github Copilot subscription to use the Copilot Chat extension, which you obtain separately through GitHub. GitHub Copilot offers both free and paid tiers. Please ensure you use GitHub Copilot in accordance with your organization’s AI policies.

Important privacy note: If you’re using GitHub Copilot with a free-tier individual account, please be aware that GitHub may use your prompts and chat history to train its models. This could include your proprietary data if you use MCP to query your Civis Database. We recommend that you review your Copilot settings to learn more about enabling or disabling prompt and suggestion collection.

More information about GitHub Copilot’s security and privacy stance can be found in the Copilot FAQ and the GitHub Copilot Trust Center.

2. Authenticate

Once you’ve enabled Copilot for your GitHub account, you can start using it in your Civis Studio.

After starting your Civis Studio, you should see the following pop-up: 

Click “Sign in to GitHibCopilot” to sign in to your GitHub Copilot account and authorize Copilot Chat in Civis Studio.

You can also sign in from the accounts UI in the bottom left corner of the screen:

Or using the command palette, which can be opened by pressing Ctrl+Shift+P (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Shift+P (macOS) depending on your operating system:

3. Open the Copilot Chat Window

Once you’ve authenticated with GitHub Copilot, you can open the Copilot Chat pane alongside your code by opening the secondary side bar on the right side of the screen:

This will open a side bar where you can chat with Copilot:

Copilot + MCP

Civis provides an MCP server which allows GitHub Copilot to communicate with both the Civis Platform API and data in Civis Platform. The Civis MCP Server can be used to accelerate development of new Civis Platform Script and Workflow code. You can ask it questions or give it instructions such as:

• Why did my most recent workflow fail?
• Add all of the tables in the salesforce_ingest schema as sources in my dbt project.
• How many donors are in the salesforce_ingest.customers table?

The Civis MCP server is available when using Copilot Chat in Civis Studio in Agent Mode. Copilot Chat’s mode can be set directly from the chat command interface:

If you would like to interact with the Civis MCP server from other environments, please see our general MCP Server documents for configuration instructions.