creating-repos.md

Creating Repositories from Templates

Copilot Workspace allows you to create repositories from templates using natural language.

Using "Use this template" from GitHub.com

To create a repository with Copilot Workspace, you can navigate to a template repository in GitHub.com and choose “Use this template”, like this:

Creating a repository from a template via Copilot Workspace

The task is based on the description of the software to create, plus the README of the template repo. You can also start this kind of task by creating a new session. Once started a create repository task looks like this:

The task is labeled as “Repository”, and the “Template” panel indicates the template repo

Copilot Workspace will then generate a specification for the repository based on the description you provide, and a plan for creating it, and then the final implementation.

Using "New session" on the dashboard

You can also create a repository from a template by clicking the “New session” button in the Copilot Workspace dashboard, and search for a template. This will open a new task in the workspace where you can describe the software you want to create.

Using the URL

You can also turn on “Create Repository” mode for any repository URL by adding ?template=true as a query parameter. For example:

https://copilot-workspace.githubnext.com/githubnext/hello-world?template=true

For incoming URLs, some repositories are treated as templates by default:

• Any GitHub template repository
• Any repository in an organization containing templates, upper or lower case, with dash at start or end
• Any repository with -template, -scaffold, -starter or -boilerplate in its name, upper or lower case, with dash at start or end