Copilot

Copilot

Copilot is the AI assistant built into the Structured Text editor. It can explain a piece of code, write documentation comments for it, or propose a refactoring — without leaving the editor.

It is multi-provider: Anthropic, OpenAI and Google are supported. An API key is required, and it is set once per organization.

Note

The key is entered in the organization settings, in the field labelled Chat GPT API Key. The name predates multi-provider support — the same field holds the key whichever provider you use.

What Copilot works on

Every action works on the code you have selected. If nothing is selected, the action is applied to the whole file instead.

The file you are editing is always sent as context, so Copilot can see how the selected lines fit into the rest of the program even when you select only a few.

The three actions

All three are available from the editor’s right-click menu and from a keyboard shortcut.

Action	Shortcut	Where the answer appears
Explain	Ctrl / Cmd + E	In the chat panel
Document this	Ctrl / Cmd + I	As a diff in the editor
Refactor	Ctrl / Cmd + U	As a diff in the editor

Explain

Opens the chat panel and answers there. The code you selected stays highlighted in the editor while you read, so you can follow along. Nothing in your file is changed.

Use this to understand unfamiliar code, or to check what a block actually does before you edit it.

Document this and Refactor

These two change code, so they do not answer in the chat. They work quietly and then show the result as a diff in the editor: your current code on one side, Copilot’s proposal on the other.

• Document this adds documentation comments to the selected code.
• Refactor proposes a rewrite of the selected code.

Nothing is written to your file until you accept it.

Accepting or rejecting a proposal

When a diff appears you have two choices:

• Accept — the proposal replaces the code in the file. The change is applied to the project file, exactly as if you had typed it.
• Reject — the diff is discarded and your code is left untouched.

Caution

Read the diff before accepting. Copilot proposes changes; it does not verify that they still compile or behave the same way. After accepting a refactoring, build the project and check the result as you would with any hand-written change.

If an action does nothing

• No API key is configured. Copilot needs the organization API key described above. Without it, requests cannot be sent.
• The file is large. The whole file is sent as context, so a very large program takes longer to answer.
• Nothing was selected and the file is empty. With no selection Copilot falls back to the whole file, and an empty file gives it nothing to work on.