Oftentimes at work, I’ll be chatting with an engineering team on Slack around a particular issue. While I sometimes have a solid grasp on the issue at hand, there are times where I want a second pair of eyes without bugging another teammate.

The below is my workflow for just that. When logged into github.com/copilot, you can start a new chat and attach repos, issues, PRs, and other native GitHub context.

But it gets really powerful when you can also include an internal Slack discussion about something. This way, you can essentially extend your research and use Copilot to ask all the dumb questions that you might be afraid to ask in internal channels. I’ve found this to be incredibly useful. Here’s my current workflow:

• Use the gh slack GitHub CLI extension to copy a Slack thread to Markdown. Assumes you already have the GitHub CLI installed.
• Create a new chat on github.com/copilot.
• In the Attach icon in the Copilot chat window, include any repos that may be relevant to your discussion.
• Copy the Slack conversation into the text entry box. I used a Raycast Quicklink to make this fast [1].
• Chat away: ask all the silly questions to Copilot that you were too afraid to ask in Slack. With the attached repos, and included Slack conversation, I’ve found this gives me a very powerful “sidebar chat” to make sure I understand any topics at hand and / or to deeply learn about the subject matter.

That’s it!

[1] For example, when I type .ghs in any window on my computer it autocompletes to gh slack {dynamic_placeholder_from_clipboard} | pbcopy. Basically, dynamic placeholders hold live content, one of them being the last thing you copied to your clipboard.