RepoChat 🚀 — Explore and talk with any repository effortlessly.

This is a submission for the GitHub Copilot CLI Challenge

What I Built

Every developer knows the power of the GitHub Copilot CLI for explaining commands and fixing local errors. But what if that same intelligence could understand the entire remotely located project architecture?

RepoChat is a command-line tool that acts as a high-performance bridge between your local system and remote repositories. With the GitHub Copilot CLI at its core, it converts the CLI into a global codebase intelligence tool, providing actionable insights across projects.

🔥 Key Highlights (Driven by Copilot CLI)
🔍 Repository-Wide Intelligence: RepoChat breaks the "active file" barrier. It indexes the entire repo so the Copilot CLI can answer questions about cross-module logic and architecture.
🧠 Intelligent Code Translation: Need a Python service converted to a Node.js middleware? RepoChat leverages Copilot CLI's deep language understanding to translate complex logic while maintaining project-wide context.
💾 Zero-Trust Security: No API keys, no third-party LLM dashboards. By using the official gh copilot extension, user data and credentials remain entirely within the trusted GitHub ecosystem.

Demo

My repository link: https://github.com/mahupreti/repochat/tree/master

If GitHub Copilot is already installed on your system, you can install the package using the command pip install git+https://github.com/mahupreti/repochat.git
and start using the RepoChat command-line tool right away.

If GitHub Copilot is not installed, you can use the Dockerfile provided below or set up on your machine and follow a few step-by-step commands to set up and run RepoChat manually.

FROM python:3.11-slim

# System deps
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    git \
    wget \
    curl \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

# Install GitHub CLI
RUN mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings \
 && wget -qO /etc/apt/keyrings/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg https://cli.github.com/packages/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg \
 && echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg] https://cli.github.com/packages stable main" \
    > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/github-cli.list \
 && apt-get update \
 && apt-get install -y gh

# Install Copilot CLI
RUN gh extension install github/gh-copilot

# Install your repo
RUN pip install git+https://github.com/mahupreti/repochat.git

WORKDIR /workspace
CMD ["/bin/bash"]

docker build -t repochat .

docker run -it --rm repochat

# 1. Log in to GitHub
gh auth login

# 2. Initialize Copilot (Downloads the CLI - Press 'Esc' after download)
gh copilot

# 3. (Optional) Install the package directly from the repository
pip install git+https://github.com/mahupreti/repochat.git

(Now you are ready to index and chat!)
I am running inside the container for test purposes.

In the same way, you can ask additional questions about the code repository and request operations such as code changes, refactoring, or improvements.

My Experience with GitHub Copilot CLI

Building RepoChat was an exploration of what I call "Modular AI." Instead of building a custom RAG backend from scratch, I treated the GitHub Copilot CLI as a secure, high-utility Intelligence API.

⚡ Frictionless Power
Integrating gh copilot was remarkably simple. It allowed me to focus 100% of my energy on the retrieval logic, knowing that the "answering" part was handled by the best code-focused model in the world.

🔒 The Trust Factor
In an era of AI privacy concerns, the Copilot CLI is a standout. Users already trust gh auth. By piggybacking on this, RepoChat becomes a tool that even the most security-conscious developers can adopt immediately.

💡 The Takeaway
The GitHub Copilot CLI is more than just a tool; it's an Enabler. It provides a standardized platform for developers to build specialized, highly intelligent tools without the traditional overhead of AI development. RepoChat is my vision of that future.

Team Submission: Mahesh Upreti ( Solo )

Comments

[Manohar Mikkili]

Thanks for sharing this. Wondering what additional repochat can bring on table, something that copilot cli cannot do natively ?

[Mahesh Upreti]

Hey Manohar, RepoChat isn’t meant to replace Copilot CLI. It’s an experiment in adding a more repo-aware, conversational layer on top of what Copilot already does. The idea is to move beyond single prompts and make it easier to explore an entire repository, follow context across multiple files, keep conversational state, and gradually add things like structured search, security-focused insights, and repo-level understanding.

It’s still early, but the goal is to see what additional value a chat-first experience can bring when navigating and understanding unfamiliar codebases.