Microsoft Releases GitHub Copilot Chat Extension for VS Code as Open Source

Microsoft has made its GitHub Copilot Chat extension for Visual Studio Code available as open source under the MIT license. The release allows developers to review and customize the code, especially focusing on the chat-based coding assistant’s ‘agent mode’ and its integration with large language models (LLMs). Additionally, the GitHub repository contains detailed information about the telemetry collection methods used by the tool, addressing concerns about data privacy and transparency. Although the open-source release includes everything running locally in VS Code, it’s important to note that the backend models driving Copilot, such as those used for generating code suggestions, remain closed source. Microsoft’s decision to open-source the extension stems from the rapid growth of the open-source AI ecosystem, which has made transparency in AI tools more valuable. The move is also seen as a way to improve security by allowing the community to find and fix issues more quickly. While the release won’t allow developers to self-host or train their own Copilot models, it offers greater control and transparency over how the tool works in practice. Furthermore, Microsoft plans to merge inline code completions into the same package in the future, potentially making Copilot Chat a central hub for both code suggestions and conversational AI-based assistance.