Codebase Context

[Steven-zion]

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I had a chance to test Cursor IDE and i dont understand why github havent allowed copilot to have that kind of codebase context. Copilot is great but if it can go through my whole codebase and understand the structure, features and functionalities it will be super useful. what does the community need to do to achieve this?

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[WaqasIshaque1]

Yeah, I’ve had the same thought ever since I tried out Cursor.

The way it understands the whole codebase /functions, types, relationships between files, it just feels like it gets what you're trying to do. With Copilot inside VS Code, it’s still impressive, but it’s mostly focused on your current file or the ones you've opened recently. Which is great for boilerplate or simple patterns… but once you’re working in a large repo with multiple layers, it starts falling short.

I actually dug into Copilot View recently turns out GitHub has already been exploring exactly this. It's called “Copilot for Your Codebase,” and the idea is to make Copilot act more like a teammate that’s familiar with your whole project, not just a glorified autocomplete.

They’ve built something like a retriever system — it indexes your codebase and pulls in the most relevant files/snippets based on what you're working on. So if you're editing UserController.cs, it can fetch related services, models, maybe even some validation utils, all automatically.

It’s still experimental, but the foundation is there. Honestly, it makes Copilot feel way more intelligent like it’s actually collaborating instead of guessing.

What does the community need to do to get this into the main product? I think we need to keep asking for it. Feature request it. Upvote it. Show GitHub that devs working on real-world, messy codebases need this level of context to trust AI suggestions.

Because yeah Copilot is powerful, but until it sees the whole picture, it's like pair programming with someone who’s only skimmed the README.