GitHub announced Tuesday that Copilot Chat, its AI chat interface for asking coding-related questions and code generation, is now generally available on its mobile app. Microsoft’s own developer platform first announced this feature last November.
At first glance, a mobile app might not be the most obvious place to use GitHub’s Copilot chat. After all, this isn’t where developers do their work. But GitHub believes there are a number of use cases for Copilot Chat on mobile that make the effort worthwhile.
As Mario Rodriguez, GitHub’s recently promoted SVP of Product, told me, the mobile app is already very popular for tasks like tagging repos and some of the social features GitHub has to offer. Many developers also use the app, which was launched at the end of 2019, to quickly check small pull requests on the go. Some developers are also already using Copilot Chat, which launched in mobile beta a few months ago, to ask additional questions about these pull requests.
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General coding questions are also a popular use case. “We see this quite often: you’re out, maybe with friends, and someone asks you a question. You say, “Actually, I don’t remember the details, so let me look that up real quick and ask Copilot.” […]“Rodriguez explained.
Some developers also use the mobile chat function to ask questions about specific repos on the go.
“Mobile devices are typically optimized to complete a task,” Rodriguez said when I asked him how the team thinks about designing for mobile. “If you think about the way we’ve designed our mobile interfaces, they’re optimized for getting a task done, because when you’re on the go, sometimes the time it takes to get something done to completion is very short. Maybe you’re drinking coffee and maybe you only have five minutes before the kids wake up and come downstairs. So you want to get something done very, very quickly.”
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To make this possible, the Copilot icon is now front and center on the mobile app. “When you open the mobile app, you’ll see a little Copilot icon right there, and you can very quickly start a conversation with Copilot and get the answer you need,” Rodriguez said. “I think the innovation we’re bringing to mobile at the very beginning will be largely: How can we help you get that answer very quickly?”
But he also said the company’s vision for the future is much broader and more similar to what GitHub is doing with its recently announced Workspace, which the company describes as a “Copilot native developer environment” that allows developers to use natural language to plan ,Create and test code in natural language.
“I think evolving Copilot is not just about helping you do some tasks, but really taking it to the next level and really getting you to build a program in your natural language very quickly . said Rodriguez. He said this could give many people who aren’t trained as developers the opportunity to build tools that help them get their work done faster.