A practical guide to connecting GitHub Copilot CLI to locally running LLMs via LM Studio instead of cloud models. Covers the required environment variables (COPILOT_PROVIDER_BASE_URL, COPILOT_MODEL, COPILOT_OFFLINE), hardware considerations for model size selection, and use cases where local models make sense such as privacy-sensitive environments, offline workflows, and learning. Also notes limitations: no first-class integration, slower performance, and reduced accuracy compared to cloud models.
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