Copilot cannot access matlab environment?

In most IDEs you can ask the LLM about the code on the screen, and the copilot chat seems to think it can access the editor, although I could not get it to actually do so. After trying to do this and getting a lot of conflicted answers I finally got this:

Me

Can you read files that are currently open in matlab?

Copilot

No — I cannot directly read files on your machine or access the MATLAB Editor. I can only work with text or files you share here.

Is that correct? The chat is not actually integrated with the Matlab like in a normal IDE (VS, VSCode, etc)? Is there some way to fix this or otherwise get it to work with the environment? Or if it is intentional it might be helpful to explain that the system is much more limited than it thinks it is.

Answer 1

[Cris LaPierre]

Currently, the copilot panel in MATLAB cannot access context in the editor. You need to copy/paste that information from your script into your chat to have a interactive chat via copilot.

It is possible to create a non-interactive prompt inside your script using ctrl+shit+P.

Finally, if you highlight code in your script, you can use the Copilot item in the Live Editor tab's toolstrip to have Coplilot explain or comment your code, among other things.

For a more thorough introduction to MATLAB Copilot, consider going through the Introduction to MATLAB Copilot course on Coursera.