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Context Providers

Context Providers allow you to type '@' and see a dropdown of content that can all be fed to the LLM as context. Every context provider is a plugin, which means if you want to reference some source of information that you don't see here, you can request (or build!) a new context provider.

As an example, say you are working on solving a new GitHub Issue. You type '@issue' and select the one you are working on. Continue can now see the issue title and contents. You also know that the issue is related to the files 'readme.md' and 'helloNested.py', so you type '@readme' and '@hello' to find and select them. Now these 3 "Context Items" are displayed above the input.

Context Items

When you enter your next input, Continue will see the full contents of each of these items, and can use them to better answer your questions throughout the conversation.

Built-in Context Providers​

To use any of the built-in context providers, open ~/.continue/config.json (can do this with the '/config' slash command) and add it to the context_providers list.

GitHub​

Type '@issue' to reference the title and contents of a GitHub issue.

{
  "name": "github",
  "params": {
    // Change to whichever repo you want to use
    "repo_name": "continuedev/continue",
    "auth_token": "<my_github_auth_token>"
  }
}

Type '@search' to reference the results of codebase search, just like the results you would get from VS Code search.

{ "name": "search" }

URLs​

Type '@url' to reference the contents of a URL. You can either reference preset URLs, or reference one dynamically by typing '@url https://example.com'. The text contents of the page will be fetched and used as context.

{
  "name": "url",
  "params": { "preset_urls": ["https://continue.dev/docs/customization"] }
}

Git Diff​

Type '@diff' to reference all of the changes you've made to your current branch. This is useful if you want to summarize what you've done or ask for a general review of your work before committing.

{ "name": "diff" }

File Tree​

Type '@tree' to reference the contents of your current workspace. The LLM will be able to see the nested directory structure of your project.

{ "name": "tree" }

Google​

Type '@google' to reference the results of a Google search. For example, type "@google python tutorial" if you want to search and discuss ways of learning Python.

{
  "name": "google",
  "params": { "serper_api_key": "<your serper.dev api key>" }
}

Note: You can get an API key for free at serper.dev.

Terminal​

Type '@terminal' to reference the contents of your IDE's terminal.

{ "name": "terminal" }

Requesting Context Providers​

Not seeing what you want? Create an issue here to request a new ContextProvider.

Building Your Own Context Provider​

Introductory Example​

As an example, here is the GitHubIssuesContextProvider, which lets you search all open GitHub Issues in a repo:

class GitHubIssuesContextProvider(ContextProvider):
    """
    The GitHubIssuesContextProvider is a ContextProvider that allows you to search GitHub issues in a repo.
    """

    title = "issues"
    repo_name: str
    auth_token: str

    async def provide_context_items(self) -> List[ContextItem]:
        auth = Auth.Token(self.auth_token)
        gh = Github(auth=auth)

        repo = gh.get_repo(self.repo_name)
        issues = repo.get_issues().get_page(0)

        return [ContextItem(
            content=issue.body,
            description=ContextItemDescription(
                name=f"Issue #{issue.number}",
                description=issue.title,
                id=ContextItemId(
                    provider_title=self.title,
                    item_id=issue.id
                )
            )
        ) for issue in issues]

It can then be set in the ContinueConfig like so:

~/.continue/config.py
def modify_config(config: ContinueConfig) -> ContinueConfig:
    config.context_providers.append(GitHubIssuesContextProvider(
            repo_name="my-github-username-or-org/my-github-repo",
            auth_token="my-github-auth-token"
    ))
    return config

This example is a situation where you request all of the data (issues in this case) beforehand, and store them in the ContextProvider.

Dynamic Context Providers​

There are other scenarios where you might want to just get information on demand, for example by typing '@url https://continue.dev/docs/context-providers' and having the ContextProvider fetch the contents of that URL dynamically. For this case, you can implement the DynamicContextProvider class like this:

from continuedev.plugins.context_providers.dynamic import DynamicContextProvider

class ExampleDynamicProvider(DynamicProvider):
    title = "example"
    name = "Example"
    description = "Example description"

    async def get_content(self, query: str) -> str:
        return f"Example content for '{query}'"

    async def setup(self):
        print("Example setup")

The setup method optionally allows you to do any setup when Continue is first loaded. The get_content method takes the query (which would be 'https://continue.dev/docs/context-providers' in the example above) and returns the content that will be used as context.