Role prompting is a technique used to improve the quality and relevance of responses from GitHub Copilot. It involves assigning a specific persona or role to Copilot within the prompt itself. By instructing Copilot to act as an expert in a particular domain (e.g., "Act as a senior security engineer" or "You are a database administrator"), the user provides crucial context. This guides Copilot to generate suggestions that are more specialized, accurate, and aligned with the conventions and best practices of that specific role, leading to a better overall suggestion.

B. Telling Copilot what tone to use is a component of setting a persona, but role prompting is broader, defining expertise and function, not just communication style.

C. This describes asking for a post-hoc explanation of a suggestion, which is a different function (e.g., using /explain), not a prompting technique to generate the initial suggestion.

D. This describes "few-shot prompting," a distinct technique where the user provides input-output examples to guide the model's response format, rather than assigning it a role.

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1. GitHub Docs, "Using GitHub Copilot Chat in your IDE": In the section "Tips for using GitHub Copilot Chat," the documentation advises on "Asking good questions" and explicitly states: "You can specify the persona you want Copilot to use when answering a question. For example, you can ask Copilot to answer as a senior developer, a security expert, or a teacher. This can help you get more relevant and accurate answers." This directly supports the concept of assigning a role to improve suggestions.

2. GitHub Blog, "How to write better prompts for GitHub Copilot" (October 26, 2023): This official guide on prompt engineering for Copilot includes a specific section on this technique. It recommends: "Give Copilot a persona. You can do this by starting your prompt with 'Act as a…' or 'You are a…' and then telling it what it should be. This will help Copilot understand the context of your request and provide a more relevant response." This confirms that defining a role for Copilot is a key strategy for better results.