You're reading from The GitHub Copilot Handbook A practical guide to transforming the software development life cycle with GitHub Copilot

Product type Paperback

Published in Nov 2025

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781806116638

Length 290 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Tools

CoPilot

Concepts

Web Design

Authors (2):

Rob Bos

Randy Pagels

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Table of Contents (18) Chapters

Preface

1. What is GitHub Copilot?

2. GitHub Copilot Explained FREE CHAPTER

3. Getting Started with Generative AI

4. Choosing the Right GitHub Copilot Plan

5. Getting Started with GitHub Copilot

6. Mastering GitHub Copilot in Your IDE: Inline Suggestions, Chat, and Agent Mode

7. Going Beyond Code: Debugging, Terminal, and Collaboration with GitHub Copilot

8. Exploring GitHub Copilot Integrations

9. Collaborating with Copilot on GitHub.com: Issues, PRs, Reviews, and Coding Agent

10. Extending GitHub Copilot with the Model Context Protocol (MCP)

11. Getting the Most Out of GitHub Copilot

12. Navigating the GitHub Copilot Learning Curve

13. Building an Internal GitHub Copilot Community

14. Changing the Narrative: Reframing Engineering with AI

15. Unlock Your Exclusive Benefits

Unlock this Book’s Free Benefits in 3 Easy Steps

16. Other Books You May Enjoy

17. Index

Debugging support

Debugging is a critical phase in the development cycle and often one of the most time-consuming. GitHub Copilot’s IDE integrations are designed to help you not just write code but also understand and fix it. GitHub Copilot assists throughout the debugging process: analyzing stack traces, suggesting fixes, explaining errors, and even generating diagnostic scripts. This section shows how Copilot’s presence in your IDE can make troubleshooting less painful and more productive.

What can GitHub Copilot do in the debugger?

In supported IDEs (such as Visual Studio Code), GitHub Copilot can be invoked during active debugging sessions or while inspecting error logs and stack traces. Some common workflows include the following:

Explaining error messages and stack traces: Highlight an error or stack trace and ask GitHub Copilot for a plain-language explanation
Suggesting fixes for bugs: Prompt GitHub Copilot to recommend code changes based...