GitHub Copilot in SSMS 22 vs. a Local 7B Model Extension: An Honest Comparison

Posted on Nov 5 • Edited on Nov 5 • AI-assisted

TL;DR Copilot in SSMS 22 now has a "bring your own model" option — but the provider list is locked (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Azure, Foundry Local), it still needs a GitHub account, and background services keep calling the Copilot API. A local extension connects to any OpenAI-compatible server (LM Studio, Ollama, vLLM), needs zero accounts, and works on SSMS 21 and 22. Here's an honest side-by-side — including the things Copilot does better.

Full disclosure up front: I built the local extension ( Arman AI Assistant ), so weigh my judgment accordingly. The Copilot facts below come from Microsoft's own documentation — if anything here is out of date, tell me in the comments and I'll correct it with credit.

Credit where it's due: this is no longer a toy. Copilot in SSMS ships as the AI Assistance workload in the Visual Studio Installer, and per Microsoft's docs you now get:

It's a serious product. There's also BYOM — "bring your own model": in the chat's model picker, choose Manage Models and add a model with your own API key from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, or Azure — plus Foundry Local, Microsoft's local runtime and the one genuinely offline route.

That's real progress. Foundry Local deserves a proper mention: it runs ONNX models on your own hardware through Microsoft's runtime, so "local" is genuinely achievable — it just means picking from Microsoft's catalog rather than your own download folder. Now the fine print — because there's a gap between "bring your own model" and "bring your own server."

Arman AI Assistant is an open-source (MIT, no telemetry) VSIX that turns SSMS into a plain client for any OpenAI-compatible server. It doesn't try to be Copilot — it's a schema-aware chat panel plus a set of database workflows. It also deliberately skips things: no ghost-text autocompletions, no autonomous agent mode. A scoped toolset keeps even a small 7B model useful instead of ambitious. Where it differs:

Read that table as "different priorities," not "winner." Copilot wins the top half; the local route wins the bottom half.

If that's you, honestly — use it. It's good, and it's improving monthly.

Repo: github.com/Fargo4u/ssms-ai-assistant — and if you want the backstory, including the two nastiest bugs I hit while connecting a local model to SSMS, I wrote about it in my earlier post.

If you try it and hit anything weird, open an issue — that's the fuel this project runs on. And if you disagree with this comparison, say so in the comments. I'd genuinely like to know where I'm wrong.