Introducing Commands, Directives, and more Pieces Copilot Enhancements 🚀: Pieces for Developers VS Code Extension 1.10.0, Obsidian Plugin 1.9.0, & JupyterLab Extension 1.9.0

As we bid farewell to 2023, we're thrilled to introduce a range of new features aimed at enhancing your Pieces Copilot experience across your favorite developer tools. This release is packed with improvements, all designed to maximize your productivity and minimize context-switching throughout your development cycle. We're eager for you to explore these updates as we round off the year, and we're equally excited about the innovations we're planning for 2024! Let's dive deeper into these exciting enhancements.

Making our Shared Copilot even more feature-rich

As we have mentioned in our previous releases for the Pieces for Developers VS Code, Obsidian, and Jupyterlab plugins, our engineering team has created a Pieces Copilot dependency shared across all of our TypeScript plugins. This change greatly accelerates the development of Pieces Copilot integrations, enabling each plugin to consistently deliver the same experience across multiple environments.

Adding Conversation Message Actions

We have added the following conversation message actions which allow users to interact with messages inside a copilot chat:

• Delete: This will delete the message
• Copy: This copies the content of the message
• Use as context: This adds the content of the message as context for the Copilot conversation
• Like/Dislike: You can now rate responses and use them for conversation context

Adding Commands and Directives to Pieces Copilot Conversations

We're excited to introduce new commands and directives in the extensions, designed to streamline your interactions with the Pieces Copilot. Slash commands like /save, /modify, /explain, and more, allow you to perform various actions directly in the chat. For instance, /save will store the latest code block in your snippet database, while /explain will provide an explanation of the code in the conversation.

The following commands have been added:

- /save will save the latest code block to your snippet database

- /saveall will save all the code blocks in a conversation to your snippet database

- /modify will allow you to give me an explanation of your expected outcome in order to modify the code in the conversation

- /explain will explain the code in the conversation

- /who will answer the question: “Who should I ask about this?”

- /comment will add comments to the code

- /help will bring up the help center

In addition, we've introduced directives, which are context shortcuts.

You can create your own custom creative, which allows you to define your own frequently used context sets for your questions. You can reuse it in the chat input with @{directive name} to apply that directive's context. For example, a directive called 'mydirective' associated with a file path can be invoked using '@mydirective' and will instruct the copilot to use that file as context.

These are the default directives:

- @recent utilize the recently opened files as context

- @workspace utilize your current workspace as context

- @new create a custom directive

- @delete delete a custom directive

These enhancements offer a more seamless and personalized experience, making it easier to manage and navigate your coding context directly within the Pieces for Developers VS Code extension.

Adding OCR Capability to Pieces Copilot Chats

Drawing inspiration from the Pieces for Developers Desktop App, we've enhanced copilot chats with our OCR feature. Now, you can add any image containing text or code by pasting it into the input box or simply clicking on the image icon. Our advanced OCR technology will accurately identify and contextualize the code within the image. This code can be saved to Pieces and used as context for Copilot chats, adding another layer of convenience and functionality to your development process.

Improvements to the Code Block Buttons

We have changed the code block buttons to make them cleaner. We are no longer going to use the rotating Pieces icon expand animation.

We have also added two new buttons:

1. Insert at cursor: this button allows for the generated code block to be directly added to the file wherever the cursor currently exists in the IDE
2. Run in terminal: this button allows you to run and execute the code block inside a new terminal window.

Other Improvements

• Suggested queries are now collapsible
• We have added a button to scroll to the bottom of the copilot chat window
• We have moved the conversation title to the header so it doesn’t have its own row
• We have added suggested queries to the copilot empty state
• Styling improvements across Pieces Copilot

Improvements to the Pieces for VS Code Extension

We have also made several improvements to the Pieces for VS Code extension that make using it more intuitive.

Adding Pieces CodeLens

We have added Pieces CodeLens functions, namely:

Pieces: Comment will add jsdoc comments to a method in a copilot chat

Pieces: Explain will explain a method in a copilot chat

Pieces Code Action

We've introduced a new code action in the quick fix menu in Pieces for VS Code for any errors in your file. By selecting "Pieces: Fix", Pieces will attempt to rectify the code directly in the Pieces Copilot chat window. This is just the beginning - we plan to expand this feature with additional functionalities such as explain, comment, and more.

Pieces Terminal Context Menu Command

You can select text in your terminal, right-click, and select Pieces: Ask Copilot. This will use the selected text as relevant context for your query. It works just like asking Pieces Copilot about code in your regular files.

Other Enhancements

• We have shortened command titles to not be so verbose, one such example is:
• Add file/folder to copilot conversation context has been changed to Pieces: Add to context
• New snippets now have the 3 recent files attached to them as anchors
• Actions in the editor context menu are now all underneath a 'Pieces' submenu

Introducing the Pieces for Developers Azure Data Studio Extension

We're excited to announce the launch of our Pieces for Developers Azure Data Studio (ADS) Extension, built from the same source as the Pieces for VS Code Extension. ADS is tailored for data professionals and delivers a sophisticated, user-friendly environment, making it the preferred choice for database development. Recognizing this platform’s growing influence, we saw an opportunity to extend the Pieces for Developers experience to ADS users. We aim to enhance the capabilities of a diverse developer community with tools that enhance not just efficiency, but also the joy of coding.

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Support

As always, if you run into issues or have feedback, please fill out this quick form or email us at support@pieces.app and we’ll be in touch as soon as possible!