Replit’s Ghostwriter AI can explain code to you—or help write them
Today, Replit announced Ghostwriter, an AI-powered programming assistant that can make suggestions to make coding easier. It works within Replit's online development environment and resembles GitHub Copilot's ability to recognize and compose code in various programming languages to accelerate the development process.
According to Replit, Ghostwriter works by using a large language model trained on millions of lines of publicly available code. This baked-in data allows Ghostwriter to make suggestions based on what you've already typed while programming in Replit's IDE. When you see a suggestion you like, you can "autocomplete" the code by pressing the Tab key.
Replit says that Ghostwriter performs best with JavaScript and Python but supports 16 languages, including C, Java, Perl, Python, and Ruby. It also supports HTML and CSS for web development and SQL for database queries. Ghostwriter includes four main components: Complete Code (which analyzes what you've written and suggests continuations), Generate Code (which creates new code based on your suggestions), Transform Code (which helps you refactor or modernize code to fit standards), and Explain Code (which analyzes existing code and explains its function using natural language).
