Stack Overflow and GitHub partner

Stack Overflow has announced the availability of a new GitHub Copilot Extension that allows developers to ask a question directly in the AI-powered coding assistant and get a summarized response from Stack Overflow based on 16 years of highly-technical, trusted knowledge contributed to its platform.

Previewed at WeAreDevelopers 2024, the Stack Overflow extension for GitHub Copilot brings together the worldʼs leading knowledge platform for highly technical content and the world's most widely adopted AI developer tool to assist developers in finding answers to their most complex coding challenges. According to the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 61% of developers spend more than 30 minutes a day searching for answers or solutions to problems. This integration ensures that developers remain in their flow state, not needing to leave and search for knowledge, ultimately increasing productivity and speeding up learning.

Through a number of strategic partnerships and product integrations, Stack Overflow continues to build on its Knowledge-as-a-Service vision to make 16 years of trusted, technical content on Stack Overflow easily accessible to developers wherever they are in their workflow.

Stack Overflow is also working with partners to create a new era in the practice of AI: the era of social responsibility. This includes ensuring knowledge shared with users in AI models and products is derived from quality, accurate, and sourced data. This new Stack Overflow extension provides attribution back to the Stack Overflow content used to generate the answer, giving developers an easy path to additional context and information.

“Our goal has always been to make Stack Overflow the destination for all things technology knowledge - a beacon of trust and expertise. However, we know developers are leveraging a number of new AI tools to support productivity and we want to ensure we are meeting them where they are and how they like to work,” said Prashanth Chandrasekar, Chief Executive Officer at Stack Overflow. “Similar to our Visual Studio Code Extension we hope this collaboration with GitHub and the Copilot Extension will allow developers to remain focused in their workflow but take into account that they are supported by trusted and attributed content backed by the millions within our community.”

“With our Copilot-powered platform, we look to keep developers in the flow with access to the services, tools, and resources they need to build and create in the AI era, said Mario Rodriguez, Chief Product Officer at GitHub. “Extensions like Stack Overflow for GitHub Copilot empower developers with a customizable and streamlined workflow, improving productivity when searching for simple and complex technical questions. Developer choice results in developer happiness, and we are excited to continue to grow our ecosystem.”

The Stack Overflow extension is currently available to a limited number of early access users through the GitHub Marketplace. Stack Overflow is also planning to extend the Stack Overflow extension for GitHub Copilot to its Stack Overflow for Teams product in the coming months.