💬 Lesson 12 of 40 AI & Copilot Intermediate

Copilot Chat & Inline Ask

Copilot Chat lets you have a conversation with AI about your code — explain it, refactor it, generate tests, or ask architecture questions, all inside VS Code.

30% complete

1Opening Copilot Chat

Click the Chat icon (✦) in the Activity Bar, or press Ctrl+Alt+I. The chat sidebar opens where you can ask anything about your code. Chat has access to your open files, workspace, and the currently selected code.

2Inline Chat

Press Ctrl+I while in the editor to open Inline Chat — a floating input that applies changes directly to your code. Type a natural language instruction and press Enter. Copilot will show a diff you can accept or reject.

Inline Chat prompts

"Add error handling to this function"
"Convert to async/await"
"Add JSDoc comments"
"Simplify this logic"

3Using /commands in Chat

Copilot Chat has built-in slash commands:

/explain — explain the selected code
/fix — fix the selected error
/tests — generate unit tests
/doc — add documentation comments
/simplify — simplify the code
/new — scaffold a new file or project

4Chat Participants & Context

Use @workspace to ask questions about your entire project, @vscode to ask about editor features, or #file / #selection to attach specific context. Example: "@workspace explain how authentication works in this codebase".

5Generating Tests with Copilot

Select a function, open Inline Chat, and type /tests. Copilot will generate a complete test suite in your project's testing framework (Jest, Vitest, Pytest, etc.).

💡 Tip: Use Chat History (Ctrl+Alt+I then arrow up) to revisit previous conversations. You can also pin useful responses to your editor as a comment with the pin icon.