GitHub Copilot features per IDE

This repository collects release notes for GitHub Copilot features across different IDEs. Scheduled GitHub Actions workflows collect the release notes from the official IDEs and IDE extensions/plugins and store these in json files.

Usage

The repository contains a Skill that can be used along with GitHub Copilot or another AI coding assistant to query the collected release notes data. For example, you can ask:

/find-feature Next Edit Suggestions (NES)

It would then return a summary of the release notes for that feature across all IDEs, including which IDE versions support it. The repository data is updated daily by scheduled GitHub Actions workflows, so you can be confident that the information is up to date. Pull the latest changes in this repository before asking the Skill so you have the latest data.

Repository layout

config/ides.yml              – single source of truth for IDE configuration
data/<ide>/<version>.json    – one JSON file per release; presence = already processed
data/<ide>/index.json        – auto-generated index of all versions with metadata
scripts/run.py               – CLI entry point
scripts/common/              – shared utilities (config, HTTP, extraction, I/O)
scripts/fetchers/            – one module per IDE
tests/                       – pytest test suite

Fetcher endpoints are configured centrally in config/ides.yml, including source_url and any per-IDE URL templates or canonical plugin URLs needed by a fetcher.

Index files

Each IDE directory contains an automatically-generated index.json file that provides a quick reference to all available versions. The index contains an array of objects with the following properties:

[
  {
    "version": "1.122.0",
    "release_date": "2026-05-28",
    "filename": "1.122.0.json"
  }
]

The index is sorted by release_date in descending order (newest first) and is regenerated each time the fetch workflow runs.

Supported IDEs

ID	Name
eclipse	Copilot for Eclipse
copilot-cli	GitHub Copilot CLI
jetbrains	GitHub Copilot for JetBrains
xcode	GitHub Copilot for Xcode
vim-neovim	GitHub Copilot for Vim/Neovim
vs-code	GitHub Copilot for VS Code
visual-studio-2022	Visual Studio 2022
visual-studio-2026	Visual Studio 2026

Running a fetcher locally

pip install -r requirements.txt

# Fetch (or update) release notes for a single IDE:
python -m scripts.run --ide xcode

# Set GITHUB_TOKEN for higher API rate limits (recommended):
GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_... python -m scripts.run --ide eclipse

Re-running the same command is safe: existing files are never overwritten (idempotent).

GitHub token scopes

The fetchers that call the GitHub REST API (Eclipse, GitHub Copilot CLI) only read public repositories, so no specific OAuth scopes are required. Any of the following work:

Note: The Vim/Neovim fetcher does not use the GitHub REST API. It scrapes the GitHub Copilot feature matrix docs page, which is publicly accessible without authentication.

Token type	Required scopes
Personal access token (classic)	(none — leave all scopes unchecked)
Fine-grained PAT	Public Repositories (read-only) access (the default)
GitHub Actions GITHUB_TOKEN	Default permissions are sufficient; no extra configuration needed

Without a token the API allows 60 requests per hour per IP address. Any authenticated token raises this to 5,000 requests per hour.

Running the tests

pip install -r requirements.txt
ruff check scripts tests
pytest

GitHub Actions CI runs the same test suite on pushes to main, pull requests, and manual dispatches. It also runs python -m compileall scripts tests as a fast syntax check before pytest.

Output format

Each file under data/<ide>/ follows the JSON schema defined in scripts/common/schema.json. Key fields:

Field	Description
ide	IDE identifier matching config/ides.yml
version	Normalised version string (e.g. 0.16.0)
release_date	ISO-8601 date (YYYY-MM-DD)
body_markdown	Full release notes as Markdown
copilot_mentions	Lines from the notes matching a Copilot/AI heuristic
source	How the data was obtained (api, feed, html, …)
neovim_era	Vim/Neovim-only era key (for example neovim-latest, neovim-2024)