As 2023 draws to a close, we're thrilled to unveil a host of new features specifically designed to enhance your Pieces Copilot experience within the Pieces for Developers JetBrains Extension. This release not only brings functional improvements but also significant UX enhancements to elevate your Pieces experience in JetBrains. We're excited for you to explore these updates as we wrap up the year, and we're equally enthusiastic about the innovative developments we have planned for 2024!

Let's dive deeper into these exciting advancements.

Making the Pieces Copilot even more Feature-Rich

Our engineering team has created a Pieces Copilot dependency shared across our plugins. This change greatly accelerates the development of Pieces Copilot integrations, enabling each plugin to consistently deliver the same experience across multiple environments.

This release adds some impressive updates to the Pieces Copilot. Let’s explore them:

Conversation Message Actions

We've introduced several actions that allow you to interact with messages within a copilot chat:

• Delete: Removes the selected message.

• Copy: Copies the content of the selected message.

• Use as context: Utilizes the content of the message as context for the Copilot conversation.

• Like/Dislike: Enables you to rate responses and use them as conversation context.

Adding Commands and Directives to Pieces Copilot Conversations

We're excited to introduce new commands and directives in the shared copilot, 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

Code Block Buttons Improvements

We've refined the code block buttons for a cleaner look, removing the rotating Pieces icon and expanding animation. We've also added two new buttons:

• Insert at cursor: Allows the generated code block to be directly added to the file at the cursor's current position in the IDE.

• Run in terminal: Enables you to execute the code block inside a new terminal window. (Coming Soon!)

Adding OCR Capability to Pieces Copilot Chats

Taking a cue from the Pieces for Developers Desktop App, we've enriched the copilot chats with an OCR feature. Now, you can incorporate any image containing text or code by either pasting it into the input box or clicking on the image icon. Our OCR engine you know and love from PFD will recognize the code within the image and provide context to it. You can save this code to Pieces and use it as context in copilot chats, further enhancing the convenience and functionality of your development process.

Snippet List SpeedSearch

We're leveraging an intuitive feature provided by JetBrains— SpeedSearch in tool windows. Now, when you're focused on your Pieces Snippet list window, simply start typing, and the SpeedSearch will dynamically match snippet names to your search. This feature is designed to make finding the right snippet faster and more efficient than ever before.

Ask Pieces Copilot about Files/Folders

You can now right-click any file or folder in your directory window and ask Pieces Copilot about the selection. The copilot will use the content of the selected file or folder as context to provide a response. Thus you can now ask questions not only about your selection, but whole files and folders!

Bug Fixes and UI Improvements

We have made some minor style and stability improvements across the copilot view.

Also, we improved our selection of colors derived from your theme, so your messages with Pieces Copilot that contain code blocks now display properly in the light themes.

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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!