I am excited to announce the Copilot Community SDK — a community-driven collection of SDKs for building integrations with the GitHub Copilot CLI and related Copilot tooling. This project aims to make it easier for developers to extend Copilot workflows across languages and tools not yet covered by first-party support in the official copilot-sdk repository.
What is the Copilot Community SDK?
The Copilot Community SDK is an open-source effort providing language bindings and SDKs that let developers programmatically interact with the Copilot CLI. Each SDK wraps the Copilot CLI server and exposes idiomatic APIs for your favourite languages, making it easier to build tools, plugins, and workflows that leverage Copilot’s capabilities in custom environments.
This is especially useful for tooling and extensions that need Copilot automation without embedding a lot of CLI plumbing yourself.
Spotlight: Rust Copilot SDK
Based on Rust 1.85, the Rust SDK allows developers to build apps that will interact with the GitHub Copilot CLI agent runtime through JSON-RPC over stdio or TCP.
Spotlight: Java Copilot SDK
This project already contains the Java Copilot Community SDK. Designed for JVM-based tooling and services, the Java Community SDK wraps the Copilot CLI, letting Java developers call Copilot programmatically from their apps or plugins.
With the Java Copilot Community SDK you can:
- Invoke Copilot completions from Java code
- Build integrations in JVM-focused tools (e.g., IDE plugins, Maven/Gradle plugins, Jenkins plugins, and more)
- Combine Copilot suggestions with custom workflows
This gives you the building blocks to embed Copilot-powered features in places a CLI alone can’t reach. The SDK is available on Maven Central and can be easily embedded into Java-based tools and applications.
Example: Apache JMeter Copilot Chat Plugin
To show the Copilot Community SDK in action, let’s look at a real-world example: the Apache JMeter Copilot Chat plugin.
Apache JMeter with a Copilot Chat experience
This project brings a GitHub Copilot Chat experience directly into Apache JMeter, the popular performance and load-testing tool. Using the Copilot Community SDK as a bridge, it allows users to:
- Ask Copilot questions about JMeter capabilities
- Ask Copilot to trigger a load test and show results in the browser
- Generate or modify JMeter test components with natural language
- Get help with scripting and performance test logic without leaving the tool
🚀 Start Building and Join the GitHub Copilot CLI Challenge
If this got you thinking “I could build something cool with this”, now is the perfect time to do it.
The GitHub Copilot CLI Challenge is an open invitation to experiment, build, and ship creative integrations using Copilot. Whether you’re hacking on a weekend project, extending an existing tool, or prototyping something wild, your work can earn real rewards, including:
- 🎟️ GitHub Universe tickets
- 🤖 GitHub Copilot Pro subscriptions
- 🎁 And more prizes for standout projects
The Copilot Community SDK is a great foundation for challenge entries, especially if you want to go beyond simple CLI usage and embed Copilot into real tools, plugins, or workflows. Java, Rust, and other community SDKs let you meet Copilot where developers already work.
How to get started
- Join the challenge and check the rules and prizes
- Pick a language SDK (or help create a new one)
- Build an integration, plugin, or workflow powered by Copilot
- Share your project with the community
👉 Join the GitHub Copilot CLI Challenge here:
https://dev.to/devteam/join-the-github-copilot-cli-challenge-win-github-universe-tickets-copilot-pro-subscriptions-and-50af
If you build something using the Copilot Community SDK, let me know. I’ll happily try it out, share feedback, and help promote it. Let’s see how far we can push Copilot together.
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