Chat window?

[matthieu-vergne]

Currently I use AI coder for autocomplete directly in the code (like the screenshot shown on the readme). When looking in the settings of AI Coder, especially the multiple prompts, it looks like there are more than that, but I don't know how to use them. Hopefully it will get clarified with #6 .

However, when I need to ask general questions or generate a file from scratch, I don't do it inside the code. I use a separate chat window. Currently with the plugin Assist AI:

Do you plan to have such a chat window? Or maybe already have one?

[matthieu-vergne]

Ideally it would allow to add selected files to the context, so we can request to generate code based on the provided files to provide relevant info and maintain current practices. Like the GitHub Copilot plugin allows to do.

[hetzge]

Hi, chat is currently out of scope from my side. Possible in the future, but not now.

Beside autocomplete there is inline edit in the latest version of AI Coder. It can be triggered by Ctrl + Shift + 1.

What is your experience with the Assist AI plugin? Do you miss some features in the chat there? Isn't it a good addition to the AI Coder plugin?

[matthieu-vergne]

The answer is somewhat involved, actually.

The issue arise from the current practices. AI plugins don't do 1 thing. They all come up with typical features implemented their own way. So some time you get a nice feature A from plugin X, but you prefer feature B from plugin Y, yet because you use plugin X for A you still have its B there despite not wanting it. This is the kind of context we have, and in this kind of context it is an issue to multiply the plugins because you multiply the same features in your menus and settings, with possible conflicts.

If each plugin happened to impleemnt only 1 feature, we could compare them and only install the one we want, and combine various plugins to get all (but only) the features we want. Ideally it would have been nice to have a plugin that setup the available models once and for all (or have it already in Eclipse) and other AI plugins building on that to add their single feature, agnostic of the specific models we use.

Once all of this is clarified, yes Assist AI complement AI Coder, but it also overlaps with it and still has its own limits. So if I keep both plugins, I am prone to raise issues in both of them. But if both of them evolve and at some point start not working well together by being there doing conflicting things, I will have to drop one, so better to focus on 1 from the start rather than asking the same things several times for different plugins that aim at achieving somehow similar things.

Then what happens if I am interested in another feature from yet another plugin? The problem just get worse, the menus more bloated, and the risk of conflict higher.

I would love to have the plugins exploded into single features, so I can actually pick up what I need. But that is not something I can decide + something that would require that plugins build on each other to factor stuff like prompts and the likes.

[matthieu-vergne]

Long things short: either the plugins get exploded, or we are bound to have the same features implemented everywhere until one or a few plugins stay afloat while the others drawn because of a lack of activity. And depending on that, either the chat window should be added, or it should not.