Writing with Copilot

June 26th, 2024

I’m an easily distracted writer, and I find it hard at times to get into a flow. Something I have been trying recently is to use GitHub Copilot as a writing assistant. Yes, the AI that suggests code in Visual Studio Code. Somewhat surprisingly, it also works for writing prose. It’s a bit more unhinged. It’s not always coherent. I don’t accept its suggestions most of the time. But it helps nudge me in the right direction. When I find myself stuck, it gives me a suggestion that I can build on - a jolt of inspiration. Words are hard after all.

I have tried to replicate the same experience with Obsidian and Ollama. I installed an auto-complete plugin. I tried with both the llama3 and openhermes models. But the suggestions are slower and often not as coherent. I think I will stick with Copilot for now, unless I need the privacy of running everything locally.

I’m seeking AI experiences in which I am an equal partner in the process. Actually, scrap that, I want to lead the process. I don’t want big AI to generate a blog post for me based on a short description that I fed to it. But I do want it to give me a helpful nudge when I’m stuck. I want it to be a tool that I can use to augment my creativity. I want to be in control.