Asking a side question in GitHub Copilot CLI

During a CLI session, you can ask Copilot a question without adding the prompt, or the answer, to your conversation history.

Who can use this feature?

GitHub Copilot CLI is available with all Copilot plans. If you receive Copilot from an organization, the Copilot CLI policy must be enabled in the organization's settings.

In this article

During an interactive Copilot CLI session, you can use the /ask slash command to ask a quick side question and see the answer in a separate dialog. Copilot uses the current conversation as context when it is available, but cannot use tools to answer the question.

You can use /ask while Copilot is currently working on a task. The question and answer are not added to the conversation history, so you should use a normal prompt instead if you want them to become part of the conversation.

The /ask command is not available for remote sessions.

Asking a quick question

  1. In a local interactive session, enter /ask followed by your question.

    For example:

    Copilot prompt
    /ask What does the previous response mean by "idempotent"?

    Note

    /btw is an alias for /ask. You can use either command to ask a side question.

    Copilot answers your question in a dialog, separate from the main conversation.

  2. To cancel an answer that is still being generated, or to dismiss a completed answer, press Esc.

The dialog does not have an input field for follow-up questions. To ask another question, dismiss the dialog and enter another /ask YOUR-QUESTION command.

Further reading