Boosting AI Code Assistant Through Context Awareness

Context is everything when it comes to LLMs — it’s the foundation that shapes their understanding and responses.

Have you ever noticed that Copilot’s suggestions are good, but at the same time just okay? They might be great for general solutions, but in your specific case — like when working at a company with its own internal rules, documentation, compliance requirements, and security standards — they don’t always hit the mark. Think about how much we, as software engineers and as humans, rely on our knowledge to make the right decisions every day. Now imagine how much better and more helpful your AI assistant could be if you provided it with just a little more context — like internal documentation, company-specific details, or guidelines. That extra input could make a big difference in improving its productivity and accuracy.

We live in an incredible time where nearly anything in the digital world is possible. Adding extra context for AI assistants in IDEs is no exception. Whether you’re using Visual Studio Code, Cursor, or Windsurf, all of them support this functionality with slight differences in how files are named. To enable this, you just need to create an additional file in the root folder of your project: