Microsoft announced the open source work of its AI chat function Terminal Chat, inviting developers to try it out and participate in the construction. "The Windows Terminal team is committed to transparency, and we want to give the open source community the opportunity to help us define artificial intelligence in Terminal applications."
Terminal Chat is a feature in Windows Terminal Canary that allows users to chat with an AI service for intelligent suggestions (such as finding a command or interpreting an error message) while remaining in the context of the terminal.
It is worth noting that Windows Terminal Canary does not provide a default model or a built-in AI model. So to use Terminal Chat, users must manually add the AI service endpoint and key in the Terminal Chat settings in Windows Terminal Canary.
Currently, Terminal Chat only supports the Azure OpenAI service. To obtain the necessary Azure OpenAI service endpoints and keys, users need to create and deploy Azure OpenAI service resources.
Windows Terminal Canary only communicates with the AI service when the user sends a message, and the chat history and the name of the user's active shell are also appended to the information sent to the AI service. After Terminal Chat ends, Windows Terminal Canary will not save the chat history.
Microsoft says it knows "AI in a terminal" sounds daunting, so it's committed to increasing transparency and actively listening to user feedback. "We firmly believe that the inclusion of the open source community will help us define our AI roadmap and help us determine the most basic set of AI features that can be used in our core product Windows Terminal."
The Terminal Chat feature is currently only available in Windows Terminal Canary and will not be included in Windows Terminal preview or Windows Terminal stable builds.