Turn bullet lists into emojis instantly with GitHub Copilot CLI

The GitHub team recently demonstrated a fun yet practical project during their weekly Rubber Duck Thursdays livestream: an emoji list generator built entirely within the GitHub Copilot CLI. This tool transforms plain bullet-point lists into visually appealing, emoji-enhanced versions—all with a single keyboard shortcut. Here’s how it works and how you can build your own version.

Why automate emoji selection in lists?

Emojis have become a universal language for adding context and emotion to text, especially in social media posts, documentation, and collaborative notes. However, manually selecting the perfect emoji for each bullet point can be time-consuming and distracts from the core task at hand.

The team addressed this pain point by creating a CLI-based solution that leverages artificial intelligence to suggest relevant emojis based on the content of each bullet. When you paste a list into the terminal, the tool analyzes each item and replaces the bullets with appropriate emojis—saving time while improving readability. The result is then automatically copied to your clipboard, ready to paste anywhere.

Key technologies behind the emoji generator

Building this tool required a combination of modern CLI development libraries and GitHub’s latest AI capabilities. The project used:

• `@opentui/core` – A terminal UI framework that enables interactive, text-based interfaces in the command line.
• `@github/copilot-sdk` – The AI engine that powers intelligent emoji suggestions by understanding natural language context.
• `clipboardy` – A lightweight library that handles cross-platform clipboard access, ensuring seamless integration with your system.

The workflow leveraged GitHub Copilot’s advanced planning and implementation features. Using the CLI in plan mode with Claude Sonnet 4.6, the team outlined the project structure and selected the best libraries. The prompt used to initiate planning was:

I want to create an AI-powered markdown emoji list generator. In this CLI app, if I paste or write bullet points, it should replace each bullet with a relevant emoji based on the text, then copy the result to my clipboard. Use GitHub Copilot SDK for the AI logic.

Copilot asked clarifying questions about the tech stack and suggested libraries such as OpenTUI, which was well-received by the community. Once the plan was finalized, the team moved to autopilot mode using Claude Opus 4.7, recently released at the time, to generate the actual code in minutes.

How the generator works in practice

The emoji list generator operates in four simple steps:

1. Input: Paste or type a list of bullet points into the terminal.
2. Processing: The AI analyzes each item and selects the most fitting emoji.
3. Output: The list is reformatted with emojis replacing the bullets.
4. Clipboard: The enhanced list is automatically copied to your clipboard.

To achieve this, the project made use of several powerful GitHub Copilot CLI features:

• Plan mode – For initial project scaffolding and dependency selection.
• Autopilot mode – For autonomous code generation based on the plan.
• Multi-model workflow – Combining the strengths of Sonnet 4.6 and Opus 4.7.
• `allow-all-tools` flag – Enabling full access to system tools for seamless clipboard integration.
• GitHub MCP server – Facilitating communication between the CLI and GitHub’s AI services.

The result is a compact, functional tool that runs entirely in the terminal—ideal for developers who spend most of their time in the command line.

Try it yourself and contribute

The emoji list generator is open source and available for anyone to use or extend. You can explore the codebase, adapt it to your needs, or build upon it to create even more creative CLI tools.

For developers interested in building similar projects, the GitHub Copilot CLI and Copilot SDK documentation provides everything you need to get started. Whether you're enhancing productivity or just having fun with AI, this project demonstrates how GitHub’s tools can simplify workflows and unlock new creative possibilities in the terminal.