Introduction to Codeium: A free alternative to GitHub Copilot

techupskills.com | techskillstransformations.com © 2021 Brent C. Laster &
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© 2022 Brent C. Laster &
Introduction to Codeium
(A free alternative to GitHub Copilot)
Presented by Brent Laster &
Tech Skills Transformations LLC
© 2024 Brent C. Laster & Tech Skills Transformations LLC
All rights reserved

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About me
• Founder, Tech Skills
Transformations LLC
• https://getskillsnow.com
• info@getskillsnow.com
• Long career in corporate as dev,
manager, and director in
DevOps and other areas
• Author
• O'Reilly "reports"
• Books
• Professional
Git
• Jenkins 2 – Up
and Running
• Learning
GitHub Actions
• Learning
GitHub Copilot
• Speaker
• Social media
❑ LinkedIn: brentlaster
❑ X: @BrentCLaster
❑ GitHub: brentlaster

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Upcoming Training - 2024

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CodiumAI or Codeium?
source: https://www.codium.ai/blog/codiumai-or-codeium-which-are-
you-looking-for/

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What is Codeium?
• AI coding assistant for code completion, chat, search, etc.
source: https://codeium.com

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How Codeium can help
• Code suggestions for nearly any current
language
• Comment driven code creation
• Automatic test generation
• SQL generation (for queries, tables, indices,
stored procs)
• Regular expression generation
• Pattern/mappings generation
• Document code
• Explain code
• Fixing code
• Reviewing code
• Translating code
• Generate K8s manifests
• What is the API to do...
• More!
Source: https://codeium.com
• Generate boilerplate code
• Less time reading docs
• Less time recalling syntax
• Learning a new language
• Reduce cognitive load
• Let programmers focus on the problem more

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Integrations
• Codeium claims support for integrations in 40+
IDEs and web editors
• Includes ones that are supported by Copilot
• Notable beyond the typical IDEs are
integrations for Jupyter, Colab, Databricks,
Chrome, Eclipse, Sublime Tex, and others
• Codeium claims support for over 70
languages.

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Training models
• Leverages LLMs trained by Codeium
team primarily
• Claim "slightly better than GPT-3.5
performance"
• At plans above "Individual", options
to use other models (GPT-4o, Claude
Sonnet)
• Developed by GitHub in
collaboration with OpenAI
• Leverages the power of OpenAI's
GPT-3.5/4 LLMs
• Trained on a large set of public code
housed in GitHub

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Pricing Plans
• Individual free forever
option
• Pro = Individual +
more
options/expanded
limits
• Teams plan adds
admin, seat
management, and
related
• Enterprise has options
for self-hosted or SaaS
deployments,
enterprise support
levels, etc.
• Each plan builds on
others
• Discounted rates for
yearly subscription

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Ways to interact with Codeium
• Inline completions
• Chat
• Search
• Shortcuts
• Different roles depending on intent

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Uses and Roles
• Accelerators/Acceleration - code
completion - working in the flow and AI
provides completion suggestions (usually
in the editor)
• Explorers/Exploration - using the chat
interface to ask how to code something?
What is the API?
• Directors/Direction - giving the AI direct
and specific instructions to create
something via the chat interface or in the
editor (via comments)
source: "https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/unleashing-developer-productivity-with-generative-ai

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Rotating through multiple options
• Use "> " to advance to next, "<" to go back
• Available if multiple options

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Accepting part of a suggestion
• Can accept by word or by line in options
• Can also make changes at the "macro" level using CodeLens

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CodeLens
• Additional options for
Codeium AI functionality
inline
• Refactor (various
functions)
• Explain
• Generate Docstring
• Refactor and explain can
also be invoked via context
menu

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Refactor use cases
• Add comments/docstrings
• Add print statements for debug
• Add type annotations
• Clean up
• Check for bugs/null pointers
• Implement code for TODO's
• Fix mypy and pylint issues
• Generate unit tests
• Make code strongly typed
• Make code faster and more efficient
• Verbosely comment code

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Interacting with the refactor functionality
• After making a
selection, Codeium
presents suggested
changes inline
• Differences noted with
colors and also +/- for
additions/deletions
• Can Accept or Reject
suggested changes

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Explain functionality through Codelens
• Explains current code
• Output appears in
Chat interface

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Generate Docstring through Codelens
• Generates proposed
header comments for
code
• Proposed diff is inline
• Can accept or reject
proposed changes

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Supercomplete
• Claim is that Supercomplete predicts intent, not just text like autocomplete
• Available in pro subscription and above, not individual
• AI that displays the diff of insertions, deletions, and edits for what other changes it thinks
you'll want to make next throughout code, not just at cursor
• Like "predictive refactor"
• Seems to work well only for code that is "close" in the file
• Example use cases:
• You add a new field to a data schema, and want to immediately add the field to
constructors, queries, etc.
• You change the name of a variable, and want to immediately change all uses of the
variable to match.
• You delete an internal utility function, and want to immediately remove all unit tests for
the function

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Supercomplete examples
• Renaming variables
▪ response to changing "i" to
"currentIndex"
• Modifying data schemas
▪ response to adding "created_at"
• Automatically binding event handlers
▪ response to adding "onButtonClick"

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Codeium's Chat Interface
prompt
chat response
model
selection (if
option)
context
sources
option to get
to Advanced
(context)
option
options -
export
conversation/
delete chat
base model
based off of
Meta's Llama
3.1 70B

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Codeium inline chat
• Can be invoked via
▪ Ctrl/Cmd+I
• Allows you to enter in
standard chat text
without using Chat
interface
• Click on "Submit" to
send to AI

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@ mentions
• Use @ in chat interface to identify particular
context
▪ functions
▪ classes
▪ repos
▪ terminals

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Specifying Context for Codeium
• Advanced tab in the Chat interface allows additional
"pinned" contexts always include select files to answer
questions
• Also can provide custom context for chat responses

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Searching with Codeium
• Supplies a search feature to allow devs to
ask questions such as "How do we do X" in
the current codebase
• Can use @ symbol to "mention" functions,
classes, repos, or terminals in your prompt
• Uses a "context engine" intended to do
additional pre-processing on front end to
gather larger sample and rank/prioritize
before sending to LLM

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Where does Codeium get context?
• Codeium looks at multiple relevant sources of context:
▪ Your IDE and open files
▪ Your local repo - indexes entire local codebase (even closed files); automatically
pulls in code snippets that are relevant to query or code you're writing
▪ Your remote repos - (Teams and Enterprise levels only)
• Any pinned context or added context in Advanced Chat
• Other option is fine-tuning (available in Enterprise version of Codeium)

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Codeium Indexing Engine
• All files in workspace are automatically
indexed
• Generates embeddings for codebase to
capture meaning.
• Makes content more accessible for
searches, prompts, etc.
• Service that powers
▪ Codebase-aware Chat
▪ Codebase-aware Autocomplete
• Available in VS Code and Jetbrains IDEs
• If green dot next to workspace, then
indexed and searchable
• By default, Codeium Indexing will ignore:
• Paths specified in `gitignore`
• Files in `node_modules`
• Hidden pathnames (starting with ".")
• Create .codeiumignore file to skip indexing
of other files/directories

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Support
• Codeium channels support discussions and issues through its Discord server which provides a less visible,
but more close community setting for users and the product developers helping each other.

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Fine-tuning based on your data
• At the Enterprise level, Codeium offers fine-tuning on your codebase
• Can personalize system to your repos and KBs
• Does it without additional compute or manual intervention
• To help deal with security concerns, Codeium for Enterprise is entirely self-hosted on-prem or in a
VPC
• SCM agnostic - can fine-tune from GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket
• Implements a continuous process

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Some thoughts on Codeium vs GitHub Copilot
• At a core level, both GitHub Copilot and Codeium do a very good job for suggested code completions and
development-oriented chat interfaces.
• In general, Copilot can provide a tighter integration while Codeium can provide a better UI integration experience.
• The quality of suggestions seems comparable with an edge to Codeium for generally providing a richer set of
alternative suggestions.
• Both products do a good job of handling the most prevalent languages and integration with popular IDEs, but
Codeium supports a wider set of both.
• Codeium provides extra features (Codelens, supercomplete, etc.) in the dev env. Copilot provides extra features
(PR summaries, chat) in GitHub.
• Codeium indexes locally, Copilot indexes on GitHub.
• Overall, if you just need an individual option that handles code completion suggestions and chat, the free option
from Codeium should work well for you and be all you need.
• However, if you or your team or company are working with GitHub and especially if you're using GitHub, you may
be better off with Copilot.
• The other reason to use Copilot is if you are expecting to focus on extensibility in the future such as a specialized
workflow or partner program.
• Codeium allows self-hosting and presumably more fine-tuning at the enterprise level of plans.

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Article on "We love open source" (ATO) site
https://allthingsopen.org/articles
/github-copilot-vs-codeium

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|
Demos!
Demos of Codeium and Copilot

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That’s all - thanks!
techskillstransformations.com
getskillsnow.com
Contact: training@getskillsnow.com

Introduction to Codeium: A free alternative to GitHub Copilot

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