Copilot Workspace Feedback

[ThisIsKirsch]

Looking for Product Feedback

The wait is over! 🎉 We’re thrilled to share that the technical preview of GitHub Copilot Workspace is now available to all paying Copilot customers. 🚀

We've loved all the feedback given to use during the technical preview and pubic preview, and we're thrilled to be getting such amazing feedback from you. Previously we were collecting feedback on Discord. Moving forward we'll be using this discussions post as the one-stop shop for all user feedback!

If you have any feedback, bugs to report, or comments in general regarding Copilot Workspace please leave it here!

[ykundesu]

I am using VisualStudio.
Currently only supported in VSCode and browser, will it be supported in VisualStudio in the future?

[Raushang4]

> How can I use GitHub Copilot features effectively if I primarily work in Visual Studio?

Multi-line Suggestions: Press Ctrl + Enter (Windows) or Cmd + Enter (Mac)
Best Practices for Effective Use

Break Down Tasks: Use comments or short code snippets to guide Copilot’s focus.
Review Suggestions: Always review the AI-generated code for correctness, security, and adherence to your project’s coding standards.
Combine with IntelliSense: Use Visual Studio's native IntelliSense alongside Copilot for an enhanced coding experience.

Tips to Use Copilot Effectively

Leverage Key Shortcuts:
Familiarize yourself with Copilot-specific shortcuts in Visual Studio, such as:

Alt + \ or Ctrl + Space: Manually trigger suggestions.
Ctrl + Enter: Open the panel for alternative or detailed suggestions.
Provide Clear Context:
Copilot generates better suggestions when you:

Write clear, well-structured code.
Add meaningful comments describing what you need.
Combine with IntelliSense:
Use Visual Studio’s IntelliSense alongside Copilot for comprehensive support.

[Julieisbaka]

Its really annoying to use when it just goes back to the github website when you click certain things

[mengeworkman]

I tried to create a simple Python script that prints "Hello World" in the browser version of workspace and I get a blank screen.

[prabhank]

I too had seen "This site can't be reached" for a while, after 5 minutes it started working.

[arafat-fullstackdev]

Try these fixes:

Check Internet – Ensure stable connection.
Disable VPN/Proxy – Might be blocking access.
Check Firewall/Antivirus – Temporarily disable and retry.
Try Another Browser – Chrome, Firefox, or Edge.
Use Incognito Mode – Avoid extension conflicts.
Flush DNS Cache – Run ipconfig /flushdns (Windows) or sudo dscacheutil -flushcache (Mac).
Switch Network – Try another Wi-Fi or mobile data.

If still not working, test on another device. 🚀

[beingminimal]

@ThisIsKirsch When we are going to have a model selection in CW? any ETA?

[skylar-anderson]

@beingminimal Making CW multi-model is a top priority for us. Stay tuned 👀

[beingminimal]

@beingminimal Making CW multi-model is a top priority for us. Stay tuned 👀

ok thanks.

[gabrieldigger]

Do you think model selection in CW will improve system performance or accuracy?

[PierrunoYT]

Would love to get Higher Rate Limits

[derKosi]

+1

replacing Random with RandomNumberGenerator.Create() (in C#, yeah i know) and putting it in its own service and changing 35 files was to much for the rate limit. So Sad.

I even would throw my own ressources (azure) against it or setup a local env (ollama + api key) to properly test this.
It seems to be able to generate solutions for Issues generated by sonarqube and such, and I would like to compare this against Devin for example.

[Ali-Razmjoo]

I couldn't finish brainstorming on an issue and faced a rate limit (yesterday and today). I didn't even get to the coding today; that's challenging for me to try this feature again while it's forcing me to wait one hour.

Error generating answer to question: You have exceeded your usage quota per hour. Copilot Workspace is a limited preview and we'd like everyone to have a chance to try it out. Please try again later. If you hit this condition regularly, please contact us via the feedback links.

[xornews]

Have you contacted the service provider to request an increase in rate limits?

[ciresnave]

+1. I hit my hourly quota limit twice today and then hit my daily quota limit. Mind you, I was working to have Copilot Workspace help me flesh out a somewhat complex project...but I'm still hoping they raise the quotas soon.

[rotev]

Hello from Workspace 👋 Sorry for the late reply.

For somewhat large repos, we've seen frequent quota limits being hit. We're actively working on optimizations for these cases.

As for quotas being exceeded due to frequent usage, this is a common request from the community. I've passed it along to our product team.

[wmeints]

I find that reordering files in the plan is difficult when you have a large list of files. I would love to be able to have some form of dedicated function to reorder files in the plan.

[dylanatsmith]

@wmeints Can you tell us more about why you reorder files and what order you put them in?

For example, are you grouping files and their tests, grouping all files together and all tests together, etc?

[wmeints]

I noticed that sometimes copilot workspace has the order reversed and produces the wrong result. For example, when the test file is generated before the implementation, the implementation generated is a lot worse. Now when I reorder the files, the results are better.

In most cases the order of the files is correct, however, when you start to iterate in the session using brainstorming or by typing revisions, new files are added at the end of the list that need to be at the top or somewhere in the middle. By then the list is getting pretty long so it becomes harder to reorder the files.

[dylanatsmith]

That’s helpful context, thanks @wmeints. We’ll look into this.

[gabrieldigger]

Have you attempted to manually organize files before starting a Copilot session to see if it improves results?

[beingminimal]

@ThisIsKirsch Does CW going to support custom Ai agents? like in case if we want to run ai agents we have built with langgraph in CW then is it going to be supported?

[beingminimal]

@ThisIsKirsch CW will have canvas like GPT4o-canvas to iterate?

[MarzLars]

Hi,
I've been playing around for some hours and I noticed that doing multiple revisions of one ''task-session''--not sure how to name it--will essentially make co-pilot behave a bit weirdly and not complete some of the instructed tasks. My fix for this has so far been to start new task sessions and make brainstorms etc. for the current features I want to improve--and begin new separate task sessions if I want some new features for my application.

From my understanding it seems to be intended to start a new "Task" in your workspace when copilot has completed what was initially prompted. Hence, I think it would be nice with some UI that promotes this workflow. See example images below

Current UI:

My suggestion would be to include a button at the bottom of the side bar, which makes it possible to start new Tasks, straight from the sidebar, when copilot has implemented the initial task prompt:

Suggested UI-draft:

***When button is clicked, you get prompted to go to a new task page and start the process again, or something along those lines. ***

But I really love it so far! Kudos!

[six7]

@MarzLars would you say you always want to be in control of when to start a new task like depicted? How would you feel if CW automatically started new tasks (as follow-ups to the original with proper UI affordances) if it thinks your request doesnt fit into the current?

[MarzLars]

@six7 I will mostly want to always be in control, but it would be nice if CW comes with a pop-up or notifaction if it notices the request diverges too much--you get the option to put that request into a new task or keep going with your current session. 😛

[lehotskysamuel]

Any plans to integrate CW with pycharm / jetbrains IDEs?

[skylar-anderson]

No specific plans as of yet, but additional IDE support is something we are considering.

[Mistic92]

Should be higher priority

[jenniyuslauw]

Is there a way for users to provide feedback to encourage prioritization of integrating CW with specific IDEs like PyCharm or JetBrains?

[grandell1234]

I would appreciate if the Command part, has knowledge of the actual scripts, so you can have it install the necessary dependencies without having to specify them one-by-one.

[SkywardSyntax]

Hey, I was wondering if CW will still be receiving weekly updates while in public preview?

[skylar-anderson]

We will continue shipping updates to CW as we build towards public preview :) Expect changelogs to land every 2 weeks.

[bripkens]

Something we frequently do is to have tasks like "Implement a new thing X that is similar to Y. To figure out what to do, search for usages of Y.". So far it seems like CoPilot workspace cannot understand this. Especially not within a monorepo. Example of where one would do this:

• plugin systems: Spinning up a new plugin (requiring new files/directories/constant files/registrations etc. – lots of boilerplate)
• adding additional telemetry: Define a new metric that is similar to an already existing one.

[skylar-anderson]

Have you tried using Brainstorming to extract a description of current system behaviors e.g. "similar to Y"? Brainstorming lets you query the current codebase to understand existing behaviors which can then be injected back into the task description in order to inform the plan.

[pethers]

Hi,

Really enjoyed using the workspace, had some success cleaning up javadoc on my open source project https://github.com/Hack23/cia .

Javadoc improvements Pull request.
Hack23/cia#6751
Hack23/cia#6744
Hack23/cia#6742
Hack23/cia#6740

Works pretty well, result https://hack23.github.io/cia/apidocs/com.hack23.cia.web/module-summary.html better module descriptions was empty before.

Some issues I had.

• Don't find all relevant files to update, seems to only scan small subset of project.
• Regulary hit "You have exceeded your usage quota per hour. " even with first brainstorm off the day.
• The base branch requires all commits to be signed, can the pull request generated be signed ? Issue already exist at Add possibility to generate signed commits githubnext/copilot-workspace-user-manual#65

Would be great if could scan the whole project and detect and modify large set of files better.

Example want to fix "Desc." descriptions in UI since I was lazy when I wrote ot https://copilot-workspace.githubnext.com/Hack23/cia?shareId=f93d776f-206d-4445-bf64-8fae04951c51 . Would be great to fix it everywhere :) Now limited to one package Hack23/cia#6753 or do it for multiple areas.

Like the workflow, easy to learn and great support for generating pull request.

Best regards

[skylar-anderson]

Thanks for sharing @pethers. It's awesome to see your success with CW.

Context selection is a critical piece of CW. We're actively working on some new ideas to improve the way CW selects files for your task.

We're also working to increase capacity as we scale CW towards a public preview so hopefully you aren't hitting quota limits as frequently going forward.

Keep an eye out on our changelog for continued improvements! :)

[MeganHRKingley]

Is there a way for Copilot Workspace to support fixing issues across the entire project instead of being limited to a specific package?

[gaieges]

Generally a huge fan of the copilot workspace, cant wait to see where it will go. Also can't wait til I'm not rate limited and can use it more extensively!

Some feedback I had while creating:

• The "ideas" concept seems powerful but a bit confusing in how it works - could be a little more intuitive
  • I'd like for IT to ask me clarifying questions to aid the plan and code steps (rather than selecting questions to ask itself)
  • I'd then like to override certain plan steps with an idea in text form and not have to deal with the ui aspects (ie via the input field at the bottom - "make sure that we implement it via X approach")
• I would want some more granularity over "steps" to add to "tasks" from a question. For example in the answer to the question of "how should the ui look", I may want to pull out just "color X" and "rounded edges" from the list of 10 items returned.
• It would be great to be able to do parts of this in the PR, if you detect something wrong after PR generation. Ie make some suggestions as you normally would via comments and have the PR updated automatically from the same contextual LLM (some tools already that do this, but you could do it better)

[skylar-anderson]

Love this feedback. Your points about improving ideas are fantastic. I'll raise these points with the team as we shape the next iterations.

[gaieges]

Glad to hear it!

Another note regarding this feedback approach- it's a bit noisy to get emails about everyone else's input. I'll be muting this thread, so ping me directly if you have any additional questions.

[tc23]

Have you experienced difficulties with the current PR editing workflow?

[davidecelano]

I've been lookin' around in the project repo and site and I wasn't able to find terms regarding what happens with source code in private/internal repos when granting access to Copilot Workspace: I think it's really relevant for businesses to be sure that their private source code is not shared to train models or provide code snippets/suggestions to the whole Github community

[xbito]

I have a bit of feedback / thoughts regarding the UI. For a bit of context, I am a software engineer that haven't used Github that much before, my previous company was using other products for code and project management. So I'm a bit familiar with Github UIs but I am not entirely comfortable yet.

I might not be offering solutions/alternatives, this is more an expression of my thoughts / first impressions while using the tool. This is my fourth session, and I have done relatively small tasks so far. I started the session from my repo using the Code -> Copilot -> Start task flow.

In this first Interaction I have some mixed indications of what I need to do next:

• On the sidebar under "Write" is what I initially entered as Start task which seems to be editable.
• On the main part of the UI I have the Brainstorm section, which has Add item callouts, and a chat with a set of Suggested questions for the Chat.
• And then we have the Generate plan button.

At that point, as a new user that has not read the documentation because I am really confident about my ability to understand a UI, I am a bit confused what I'm supposed to do next.

This is what I feel the UI is telling me: If I click "Generate plan" it is going to use the input I made in Write to re-generate the Brainstorm. But actually what happens if I change the Task is that a new button/section appears at the top of the Brainstorm content to regenerate it, and I still can hit Generate plan without updating the Brainstorm:

It seems like the intention is for Brainstorms to be updated when the Task changes. There's even this "Outdated" indicator in the "Ideas from brainstorm" thing under the Task textbox once I change the Task. But if I click Generate plan thinking that it would update the Brainstorm it seems to proceed with the original Brainstorm instead. I have to click on Brainstorm or on the Outdated label and then click on that other Update button to update the Brainstorm and then update the Plan. But, also, if I update the Brainstorm there is no indication that the Plan is now Outdated, and that I should click on Update plan rather than on Implement selected files.

Now, if click on one of the "Suggested questions", it seems to replace the content from the original Brainstorm. Turns out that the original one still exists under that hamburger button, but there is no indication that that is what is happening. Why not add another tab beside Brainstorm? Or indicate that will open another "page"? But also, what the Chat-like interface is suggesting to me is that this section is more like a chat-gpt experience, where there is a conversation, not an individual document per question/answer. First thing I thought was: It's not clear why aren't the questions I'm asking added to the "Ideas from brainstorming section" which contains the original, automatically added, "How do I solve this task?" (By the way, maybe it should say we, it is copilot and the user brainstorming together right?)

Once I used the questions I saw the answers give you options, like "Where should the avatar be displayed", it gave me a few options, which I can then "+ Add to task" if I agree. Which then adds something to the list of ideas from brainstorming, but also changes the original "How do I solve this task?" page/answer right?. In particular in the Proposed solution section. Why both places?

There also seem to be questions, like the above one, that is not really giving me the option to specifically select which one I want to add to task, it seems to be an all or nothing rather than options like in others. These seem to be 3 ways to attend to the issue expressed by the question that do not need to be all done. And in this case I can't edit instantly, I have to click on the pencil button to enter edit mode, which is not the case with the original "How do I solve this task?" page.

This whole concept of Suggested questions seem to dance between 2 different purposes, there are some that seem to be questions that may help us further refine the request, like the one about where to display the avatar. But then there are others that seem to be more about the user wanting to learn about something, for example I have a suggestion about Learning about PySide6 for UI development. Should there be a distinction about Questions for refining where we will be given a selection to further refine the task, versus those that are about other related topics?

I have more thoughts but my son just came back from school! Hope you find these reflections (sort of ramble) useful!

[Greg-Myers-SB]

Bug report:

Copilot is unable to handle file paths with a . in them such as .semaphore/semaphore.yml.
It reads the contents of <my_repo>/blob/master/.semaphore/semaphore.yml and makes a new file at <my_repo>/blob/master/semaphore/semaphore.yml instead of editing the file.
Notice there is no longer a . in front of semaphore.

[rotev]

Hey @Greg-Myers-SB! Thanks a lot for the report.

Do you happen to have a repo I could take a look at?

I just tested with .folders, and it worked for me—here’s an example PR.

It looks like there’s something trickier going on.

[Greg-Myers-SB]

I don't have anything I can show publicly, sorry.

[lots0logs]

Hi,

It doesn't look like git submodules are supported yet. Is that the case? Copilot doesn't seem to see the code inside our submodules when it tries to come up with implementation plans. I tried initializing the submodules in the terminal, but it failed with a permission error (all of our submodules are under the same org as the main repo and have the same permissions).

[umair-me]

Are there any plans to allow opening git projects from Azure DevOps?

[lumaxis]

Unfortunately, there are no such plans at this time

[renorari]

I have a problem opening files like src/app/users/[userId]/page.tsx in the copilot workspace.
It seems that the file cannot be opened if there are symbols such as [userId] in it.

[lumaxis]

@renorari I was just able to open a file that contains both [ ] and … in its name without problems. Could you please describe in more detail how to reproduce this issue?

[renorari]

I just now checked and it is able to open it!
It was probably some bug that got combined, or a problem that had already been fixed.
Thank you!

[renorari]

@lumaxis Sorry,
The same bug happened again.
It is displayed like this, and it seems that the file is still not being loaded correctly.

[renorari]

When I tried to make editing files that are actually existing, it is treated as if the files were not existing.
(The same happens with the file viewer.)

[hanisntsolo]

This is amazing. While returning to the code you wrote some time ago, the inherent suggestions help kickstart your memory.

[lumaxis]

Thank you for your kind words!

[pRizz]

I am running into a bug where the first ~1600 lines of code of a file get deleted/truncated, whereas the specific change is only on line 1700. I tried to instruct it to not delete or truncate code, but it is not working. Is there a workaround or another way to prompt? I also tried Revise, but that does not seem to help either. It is correct otherwise.

https://copilot-workspace.githubnext.com/pRizz/rust-bitcoincore-rpc/tree/master?s=cec9

Repo: https://github.com/pRizz/rust-bitcoincore-rpc

Task: Fix a typo with GetBlockTemplateResulMutations to GetBlockTemplateResultMutations. Do not delete code or truncate code with an ellispsis.

[Vesias]

Der Copilot Workspace ist einfach der Wahnsinn – wer braucht heutzutage noch eine klassische IDE, wenn man so viel mehr Möglichkeiten hat? Mit diesem Tool erlebt man förmlich, wie Softwareentwicklung in eine völlig neue Dimension katapultiert wird. Die intuitive Benutzeroberfläche und die hohe Nutzungsintensität ermöglichen es, in kürzester Zeit beeindruckende Projekte umzusetzen.

Besonders beeindruckend finde ich, dass man praktisch alles bauen kann, ohne sich in komplizierten IDE-Strukturen zu verlieren – als ob man die Arbeit eines „42-IQ-Weinbergsschneckes“ einfach hinter sich lässt. Die Effizienz und der Spaßfaktor kommen dabei nicht zu kurz: Es ist, als ob man in einer völlig neuen Ära der Programmierung angekommen ist.

Kurz gesagt: Copilot Workspace setzt neue Maßstäbe in puncto Flexibilität und Produktivität. Weiter so!

[Vesias]

BUT ITS SO LIMITED

[rotev]

Danke für dein mega positives Feedback! 😊 Wir geben unser Bestes, um das Produkt noch weiter zu verbessern.

Mit „limited“ meinst du das Quota oder etwas anderes?

[Tabberwocky]

Hi, I'm trying to get the agents to correctly date/timestamp changelog updates while operating in Copilot Edits/Agent mode. Any suggestions?

[theking2]

a scheduled change from depency inject GuzzleClient to superclassing it worked great. I love the little fixes check box.

[alrightryanx]

I really want a model selector but even more so appreciate the usefulness of the app/website currently. Can we get a descriptor of when usage access will resume as well? I really could appreciate more quota.

[jasonrclark]

⚠️ At 01:00 UTC on Friday Feb 21, 2025 Copilot Workspace will be down briefly for maintenance. The maintenance is anticipated to last no longer than 2 hours, and we will notify here when it begins and ends. Thanks for your patience.

[jasonrclark]

⏰ Maintenance for Copilot Workspace is starting now!

[jasonrclark]

✅ All right, the primary maintenance that required a little downtime should be complete now. Please let us know here if you see any problems once the "Copilot Workspace is currently under maintenance" message clears for you.

[lbussell]

Copilot workspace fails to run Build/Test/etc. "commands" when sh is the default shell in the image. It tries to run the source command first and says that it is not found.

Installing and changing the default shell to zsh using the devcontainer config allows the Build and Test commands to work:

{
    "image": "mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:9.0-noble",
    "features": {
        "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/common-utils": {
            "installZsh": true,
            "configureZshAsDefaultShell": "true"
        }
    }
}

[lbussell]

If you don't want to use zsh, and your image has bash in it already, then you can also change the default shell. I added this option to my devcontainer config: "onCreateCommand": "sudo chsh -s /bin/bash <your-nonroot-username>".

[joesarre]

I opened the "commands" tab in a session with an open PR. New session and PR today. I configured the tasks. I was hoping to have a command line with the PR checked out. Instead the container had a commit from Jan 15th checked out. Very confusing and difficult to figure out my way out of it. I'm not sure what was special about Jan 15th. It might be that that was the last time I edited devcontainer.json.

[Tabberwocky]

Hi,

Question, and this may be specific to using copilot on Mac OS: when the agent is off and running in copilot/agent mode, how does one keep it from pausing when vscode is minimized or off-screen? vscode or switching ? E.g.,

1. Select any agent in copilot edits/agent
2. Prompt the agent to make changes that will take several minutes
3. Switch to other desktop (aka space) on the same mac or minimize vscode
4. Several minutes later return to copilot. Very little or no progress has been made

[rodrigoslayertech]

First of all, this should be integrated with Github Projects.

Tasks in Workspace can be confusing with tasks in Projects.

Workspace should be an interface to automate task executions in Projects. When creating a task in Projects, executing it in Workspace creates a specific branch for task modifications and opens an interface with plans/steps for review and approval by a human.