Today, we are announcing the beta release of Ghostwriter Chat. Now with chat, a proactive debugger, and awareness of your project’s context, Ghostwriter becomes the best AI pair programmer in the world.
Building Ghostwriter
Last fall, we introduced Ghostwriter, Replit’s coding AI, with Complete, Generate, Transform, and Explain Code - coding assistant tools that work with you as you code. Together they made coding faster by automating repetitive tasks and removing the drudgery of writing boilerplate code.
That was just the first step towards our master plan to create a fully autonomous pair programmer – one that feels like working with another teammate.
Ghostwriter Chat is the next phase of AI-assisted programming, helping you go from idea to product even faster. Recent studies show that conversational generated code suggestions are accepted +50% of the time, and +75% of people had a positive experience with conversational AI.
Replit is the first to bring it directly to the IDE.
Demo #1
Smart file context awareness
Today, developers spend hours searching for solutions on Google and Stack Overflow, asking “How do I do _____?” and “What does this error mean?” Sometimes, you might not even know the right words to search for your problem. Regardless of what you search for, it can be hard to find a solution, and typically not possible to find one that matches the unique project you are building.
Existing conversational AI tools can be a great substitute for search, but they run into the same issue. The AI may respond with a solution but does not know the project you are working on. You can, of course, continue to prompt the AI by pasting in more context and code, but this takes you out of the flow, slows you down, and is not a great coding experience.
Ghostwriter Chat lives in the IDE, and it knows about the code you’re working on. From your first prompt, Ghostwriter Chat incorporates aspects of your project to give you more accurate and relevant answers, saving you time. The extra context provided is a huge unlock. It helps your AI pair programmer do more in the IDE than any other AI code tool…like debugging errors.
“With Ghostwriter Chat, our team is the first to market with an AI assistant that is truly integrated within the IDE. The proactive debugger is a great example of how developers benefit from an AI with a holistic view of the entire software stack, including build and dependencies information, debugging data, and runtime insights.”
— Reza Shabani, Head of Data & AI at Replit
Demo #2
At Replit, we believe that we’re still only scratching the surface when it comes to the power of Large Language Models (LLMs) and their ability to fundamentally change how software is created.
“The milestone Replit reached with Ghostwriter Chat cannot be understated. Ghostwriter Chat sets a new bar for LLMs using context to deliver utility to users. It's a bar developers will soon come to expect.”
— Michele Catasta, LLM Expert and former head of Applied Research at Google Labs
Proactive Debugger
Manual debugging is a tedious process. Click run. Red error appears. Copy and paste it into a search engine. Scroll endlessly. Find an option. Paste in the editor. Hope it works in your project. Click run. See another error. Repeat.
Every developer knows this feeling. Each time an error is cast, you are forced to exit the IDE and go somewhere else for help, whether that be Google, Stack Overflow, or even ChatGPT. Ghostwriter Chat changes this.
Demo #2
In contrast, when you get an error in your console, Ghostwriter Chat will proactively reach out with suggested solutions. With the press of a button, Ghostwriter Chat generates and explains a complete code block that you can paste into your project without ever leaving the IDE, keeping you in flow.
Switching contexts is a waste of your valuable time and focus. Ghostwriter Chat frees you to spend more time building.
“As a developer and longtime Replit user, I am excited for proactive debugging which will help developers spot and fix issues quickly, and teach us how to avoid similar issues in the future. Ghostwriter Chat is an incredible tool and example of how our language and code models can be used to help improve developers’ workflows.”
— Peter Welinder, VP of Product & Partnerships, OpenAI
Join the Ghostwriter Chat beta today
With Ghostwriter Chat, developers can generate, transform, refactor, explain, and debug code, with much more to come. We’re excited to continue iterating and shipping new features to create a delightful, productive, coding experience. Subscribe to Ghostwriter today and, for a limited time, get free access to the Ghostwriter Chat beta. The Docs can be found here.
Team shoutouts
The magicians behind building this product are:
- Data & AI team: Reza Shabani & Muhammad Sareini
- Workspace engineering: Xiaoyi Chen
- Design: Devin Halladay
- Product management: Aman Mathur
- Product engineering: Jonathan Unikowski
