Gh Copilot CLI

GitHub Copilot CLI (gh copilot)

AI-powered terminal assistant. Translate natural language to shell commands, explain commands, and get suggestions.

• Official docs: https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/using-github-copilot/using-github-copilot-in-the-command-line

Prerequisites

Requires an active GitHub Copilot subscription and the gh CLI.

Setup

gh extension install github/gh-copilot     # Install the extension
gh copilot --version                        # Verify installation

Common Commands

Suggest Commands

gh copilot suggest "find all large files over 100MB"
gh copilot suggest "compress all PNG files in this directory"
gh copilot suggest "create a git branch from a specific commit"
gh copilot suggest "find and kill process on port 3000"
gh copilot suggest "set up a cron job to run daily at 9am"

Explain Commands

gh copilot explain "tar -xzf archive.tar.gz"
gh copilot explain "find . -name '*.log' -mtime +30 -delete"
gh copilot explain "awk '{print $2}' file.txt | sort | uniq -c"
gh copilot explain "ssh -L 8080:localhost:80 user@server"

Shell Aliases (for convenience)

# Add to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc:
# alias suggest='gh copilot suggest'
# alias explain='gh copilot explain'

Agent Best Practices

• Use suggest to generate complex shell commands from natural language descriptions
• Use explain to understand unfamiliar commands before running them
• The tool supports git, shell, and gh-specific command suggestions
• Suggestions are context-aware (considers current directory, OS, shell)
• Always review suggested commands before executing - they may need adjustment
• Use this for command discovery, not as a replacement for known commands

Example Workflows

Find the right command for a task

gh copilot suggest "recursively find all TypeScript files modified in the last week"
# Copilot suggests: find . -name "*.ts" -mtime -7

Understand a complex pipeline

gh copilot explain "git log --oneline --graph --all --decorate"