CodeGPT: GPT3 and ChatGPT extension for VSCode

This Visual Studio Code extension allows you to use the official OpenAI API to generate code or natural language responses to your questions from OpenAI's GPT3 or ChatGPT, right within the editor.

Supercharge your coding with AI-powered assistance! Automatically write new code from scratch, ask questions, get explanations, refactor code, find bugs and more 🚀✨

📢 Warning: ChatGPT model was removed from the API, please change to another model in the extension settings.

Links:

• Visual Studio Marketplace
• Github Repository

Features

• 💡 Ask general questions or use code snippets from the editor to query GPT3 via an input box in the sidebar
• 🖱️ Right click on a code selection and run one of the context menu shortcuts
  • automatically write documentation for your code
  • explain the selected code
  • refactor or optimize it
  • find problems with it
• 💻 View GPT's responses in a panel next to the editor
• 📝 Insert code snippets from the AI's response into the active editor by clicking on them

Installation

To use this extension, install it from the VSCode marketplace.

1. After the installation is complete, you will need to add your OpenAI API key to the extension settings in VSCode. To do this, open the Settings panel by going to the File menu and selecting Preferences, then Settings.
2. In the search bar, type CodeGPT to filter the settings list.
3. In the CodeGPT section, enter your API key in the top field

After completing these steps, the extension should be ready to use.

Obtaining API key

To use this extension, you will need an API key from OpenAI. To obtain one, follow these steps:

1. Go to OpenAI's website. If you don't have an account, you will need to create one or sign up using your Google or Microsoft account.
2. Click on the Create new secret key button.
3. Copy the key and paste it into the API Key field in the extension settings.

When you create a new account, you receive $18 in free credits for the API which you must use in the first 90 days. You can see pricing information here. 1000 tokens are about 700 words, and you can see the token count for each request at the end of the response in the sidebar.

As of January 31, 2023, only the code-* models and ChatGPT are avilable for free! You only spend your credits when you use the text-* models. You can change the model in the extension settings.

Using the Extension

To use the extension, open a text editor in Visual Studio Code and open the CodeGPT panel by clicking on the CodeGPT icon in the sidebar. This will open a panel with an input field where you can enter your prompt or question. By clicking enter, it will be sent to GPT3. Its response will be displayed below the input field in the sidebar (note that it may take some time for it to be calculated).

You can also select a code snippet in the editor and then enter a prompt in the side panel, or right-click and select "Ask CodeGPT". The selected code will be automatically appended to your query when it is sent to the AI. This can be useful for generating code snippets or getting explanations for specific pieces of code.

To insert a code snippet from the AI's response into the editor, simply click on the code block in the panel. The code will be automatically inserted at the cursor position in the active editor.

You can select some code in the editor, right click on it and choose one of the following shortcuts from the context menu:

Commands:

• Ask CodeGPT: will provide a prompt for you to enter any query
• CodeGPT: Explain selection: will explain what the selected code does
• CodeGPT: Refactor selection: will try to refactor the selected code
• CodeGPT: Find problems: looks for problems/errors in the selected code, fixes and explains them
• CodeGPT: Optimize selection: tries to optimize the selected code

Ask CodeGPT is also available when nothing is selected. For the other four commands, you can customize the exact prompt that will be sent to the AI by editing the extension settings in VSCode Preferences.

There, you can also change the model that will be used for the requests. The default is ChatGPT which is smartest and currently free, but you can change it to another model (text-davinci-003 is the best of the paid ones, code-davinci-002 of the free) if it doesn't work. You can also change the temperature and number of tokens that will be returned by the AI. The default values are 0.5 and 1024, respectively.

Please note that this extension is currently a proof of concept and may have some limitations or bugs. We welcome feedback and contributions to improve the extension. Also check out the ChatGPT extension which is smarter, but the setup is more complicated and it may not work (403/429 errors). If you enjoy this extension, please consider buying me a coffee ☕️ to support my work!