GitHub Copilot for CLI for PowerShell

GitHub Next has this cool project that is basically Copilot for the CLI (command line interface). You can sign up for their waitlist at the Copilot for CLI site.

Copilot for CLI provides three shell commands: ??, git? and gh?

This is cool and all, but I use PowerShell. Turns out these ?? commands are just router commands to a larger EXE called github-copilot-cli. So if you go "?? something" you're really going "github-copilot-cli what-the-shell something."

So this means I should be able to to do the same/similar aliases for my PowerShell prompt AND change the injected prompt (look at me I'm a prompt engineer) to add 'use powershell to.'

Now it's not perfect, but hopefully it will make the point to the Copilot CLI team that PowerShell needs love also.

Here are my aliases. Feel free to suggest if these suck. Note the addition of "user powershell to" for the ?? one. I may make a ?? and a p? where one does bash and one does PowerShell. I could also have it use wsl.exe and shell out to bash. Lots of possibilities.

function git? { $TmpFile = New-TemporaryFile github-copilot-cli git-assist $args --shellout $TmpFile if ([System.IO.File]::Exists($TmpFile)) { $TmpFileContents = Get-Content $TmpFile if ($TmpFileContents -ne $nill) { Invoke-Expression $TmpFileContents Remove-Item $TmpFile } }}function gh? { $TmpFile = New-TemporaryFile github-copilot-cli gh-assist $args --shellout $TmpFile if ([System.IO.File]::Exists($TmpFile)) { $TmpFileContents = Get-Content $TmpFile if ($TmpFileContents -ne $nill) { Invoke-Expression $TmpFileContents Remove-Item $TmpFile } }}

It also then offers to run the command. Very smooth.

Hope you like it. Lots of fun stuff happening in this space.

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.