Tools
Now that we’ve chatted with Copilot a bit and identified the code for the Home page. Let’s talk about one of the most powerful parts of any AI Agent — tools.
Tools are what allow Copilot to actually go out and do things beyond just chatting. You can see all the available tools by clicking the tools icon at the bottom-right of the chat window. The tools that are available depend on which mode you're in — in Ask mode, you get a limited set.
One of the tools available in Ask mode is the fetch tool, which lets Copilot browse the web. To use a specific tool, you can reference it with a # — for example, type #fetch in your message. Copilot can also figure out which tool to use on its own, but being explicit is more reliable.
Let’s keep working on the Home page. Since our app is built by Bitovi, let’s add a “Created By” section with information about the company.
✏️ Run this prompt
Use the #fetch tool to do research on Bitovi: - Basic info about the company - Logo - Brand colors
When Copilot tries to fetch something from the web, it'll ask for your approval first — you'll see a little prompt pop up. This is by design: anytime Copilot wants to do something that has potential side effects (fetching a URL, editing a file, running a command), it checks in with you first if the action seems risky.
You can control this behavior with the approvals dropdown at the bottom of the chat:
Default — Copilot decides when to ask
Bypass — auto-approves everything
Autopilot — runs continuously and makes decisions on your behalf without checking in
Copilot will go off, read through some pages on Bitovi’s website and potentially other sources like GitHub, and come back with all of the info we requested.
Now that we’ve gathered this information in the chat, it will be available and in Copilot’s working memory for the rest of the conversation.
Fetch is just one of many tools available to Copilot by default. Keep in mind that the tools available to Copilot will be determined by what mode it’s running in. For example, in Ask mode Copilot can fetch things from the web, read files in the codebase, but it can’t edit files or run commands in the terminal.
Automatic Tool Usage
In this section we explicitly asked Copilot to use the fetch tool by referencing it with the #fetch hash, but this is usually not necessary as Copilot can decide which tools to use on it’s own to respond best to your request.
Feel free to play around with more tools to see what they do and try to get Copilot to use one without explicitly asking for it.
Next: Plan Mode