Autocomplete tips

Multiple suggestions

When you are offered ghost text for a suggestion, there are sometimes multiple options you can choose from!

You can cycle through prev and next suggestions via:

• Option + ]
• Option + [

This seemed to work better / more consistently for me after I hovered over the "ghost text" suggestion to get the context menu, and then selected "Always Show Toolbar."

Accepting a partial suggestion

I typically click tab to accept an entire suggestion, but also learned that you can accept one word at a time via:

• Command + →

This is the default keyboard shortcut, but to get this one working, I had to open Keyboard Settings (via Command Palette) and clear and then retype the keys.*

Improving suggestions

There are a few tricks you can use to help Copilot give you better suggestions:

• Descriptive function names: to help Copilot understand what you want!
• Psuedocode comments: Add a comment with instructions for Copilot, eg.
  // Create tr with tds for name and age. Use template strings.
• Paste reference code: In your comment, you can paste (and then later delete) relevant variables/fields to hint to Copilot
  // These are model fields: name=models.Char, amount=models.decimal,
• Extract a variable: Pulling values into a well-named array or enum can improve places those values are referenced later

Context

By default, Copilot only uses open files for context.

• Specific file: You can reference a particular file by typing # and the filename. Once you type #, Copilot should suggest existing files in a typeahead menu!
• All project files: You can make Copilot consider the entire codebase by prefacing your message with @workspace.

Chat and Agent Modes

Chat mode

• Type a / for available commands
• Good questions to ask:
  • How can I refactor this?
  • How can I improve readability?
  • Create unit testing headers for this file
  • Ask for executable code like "How do I start a python server in my terminal", etc

Agent mode

With Agent mode, it will make changes and create files for you rather than responding as a chat conversation. It will still offer the diff for you to accept or modify or reject.

To switch to Agent mode:

• Use the command palette: >Chat: Open Chat (Agent)
• Commad + Shift + i also seems to work!