One thing I often notice when using GitHub Copilot is that it doesn’t always have the latest documentation for the libraries I use. This can be a real pain when I’m working with something new or cutting-edge.

Using git-mcp MCP server

So, I tried setting up this MCP server to pull documentation straight from the microsoft/playwright-mcp repo (it doesn’t have to be an MCP-related repository, I just picked that one because it’s new). With the MCP server running, Copilot suddenly had access to the latest docs and could answer questions like, “What tools does the Playwright library provide?” - something it couldn’t do before.

I decided to kick it up a notch by asking Copilot to use Miller (a command-line data manipulation utility) to read a CSV file of cities and add a short_city column containing the initials of each word in the city column (for example, “New York” becomes “NY”). This is a bit tricky, since Miller’s docs are scattered across a bunch of files, and the info you need is sometimes buried pretty deep.

Not surprisingly, Copilot struggled a bit. It tried searching for random keywords in the docs and kept coming up with broken commands. Then, after I started a new chat (hoping for better luck), Copilot found a bit of documentation about using mlr help <topic> to get help on specific topics. It started trying to use Miller’s built-in help instead of digging through the docs, but still couldn’t quite get the command right. At one point, it even tried fetching info from Miller’s official website (not the repo), but that didn’t help either.

The old-school way: just copy the docs into your repo (no MCP server)

So I went back to basics: I copied all of Miller’s documentation files into my own repo and told Copilot it could use them. This time, after a few tries, it actually got the command right:

mlr --csv put '$short_city=""; for (word in splita($city, " ")) { t_city .= substr(word, 0, 0) }' sample.csv

Takeaways

The MCP server can be a lifesaver when you need up-to-date docs for a library, but sometimes it may not work perfectly, and even advanced tools like ChatGPT with web search capability can struggle with tricky questions.

• If Copilot is struggling with outdated docs, try running the git-mcp MCP server (or enable whatever feature your AI tool supports) to give it live access to the latest documentation.
• In some cases, copying the docs directly into your repo can make a big difference.
• Don’t be afraid to experiment with different approaches. Sometimes the simplest solution works best.