GitHub Copilot Development Environment (copilot-dev)

Installs the GitHub Copilot Chat VS Code extension, the gh copilot CLI extension, and shared instructions for commit messages, pull-request descriptions, and code reviews (Conventional Commits + gitmoji + active repo PR template).

Note: This feature covers the AI assistant only. For gh CLI and GitHub platform extensions (PR reviews, Actions, RemoteHub), use github-dev.

Example Usage

{
  "features": {
    "ghcr.io/helpers4/devcontainer/copilot-dev:1": {}
  }
}

Combined with the platform tooling (recommended — gh must be present for the gh copilot extension to install):

{
  "features": {
    "ghcr.io/helpers4/devcontainer/github-dev:1": {},
    "ghcr.io/helpers4/devcontainer/copilot-dev:1": {}
  }
}

What’s included

Extension

• github.copilot-chat — GitHub Copilot Chat AI assistant in VS Code / Cursor

CLI

• gh copilot — GitHub Copilot in the terminal (gh copilot explain, gh copilot suggest) Installed via gh extension install github/gh-copilot. Requires gh CLI to be present (install github-dev first, or any other feature that provides gh). Skipped with a warning if gh is not found at build time.

Shared instructions

Injected via VS Code settings — applied automatically to every Copilot Chat request of the corresponding type:

Setting	Trigger	What it enforces
commitMessageGeneration.instructions	Generate Commit Message	Conventional Commits + gitmoji, scopes from scopes.json at the repo root
pullRequestDescriptionGeneration.instructions	Create Pull Request	Same title convention + repo PR template auto-detection with fallback
reviewSelection.instructions	Review and Comment	Correctness bugs, security issues, simplification - no style feedback

Override or disable

All three are array settings — VS Code merges entries from User, Workspace, and feature-injected sources. To add your own rules, append an entry in your User or Workspace settings. To disable a helpers4 default entirely, set the array explicitly to [] in your settings.

OS and Architecture Support

• OS: Linux (Debian/Ubuntu-based images) for the CLI install; any for IDE-only use
• Architectures: amd64, arm64