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?andgh?
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 ?? {
$TmpFile = New-TemporaryFile
github-copilot-cli what-the-shell ('use powershell to ' + $args) --shellout $TmpFile
if ([System.IO.File]::Exists($TmpFile)) {
$TmpFileContents = Get-Content $TmpFile
if ($TmpFileContents -ne $nill) {
Invoke-Expression $TmpFileContents
Remove-Item $TmpFile
}
}
}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.
About Scott
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.
