Copilot CLI Updates & Release Notes

Added

Hooks can now receive the current OpenTelemetry trace context and emit correlated spans: inputs gain traceparent (plus tracestate when the span has vendor state); command hooks also get env vars.

Fixed

Hook lifecycle events (hook.start/hook.end) from hooks inside a subagent are now recorded on that subagent's session and re-emitted on its parent, instead of being dropped on an internal session.

Removed

Removed the PLUGINS_DASHBOARD opt-out and the legacy skills picker it kept alive. /skills, bare /mcp, and /mcp show (with no server name) always open the dashboard; /mcp config still opens the dedicated MCP wizard.

2026-08-27

The plugins dashboard is available to everyone: run /plugin, /mcp, or /skills. Set PLUGINS_DASHBOARD=false to opt out of it and the copilot plugins command.

Ship MCP 2026-07-28 support to CLI, SDK, IDE, and in-memory clients

Hooks can now receive the current OpenTelemetry trace context and emit correlated spans: inputs gain traceparent (plus tracestate when the span has vendor state); command hooks also get env vars.

Windows: remote MCP servers protected by Microsoft Entra ID can now sign in through the OS authentication broker (WAM), usually with no prompt at all. Other platforms, --device-code, and machines without the broker library keep the existing browser flow.

Add xhigh reasoning effort support for Grok 4.6

Startup now offers to restore sessions that were still open when their CLI went away, so a crash or a machine restart no longer means reopening each terminal by hand

models.list now includes service-published infoMessages and warningMessages per model

Add copilot app to open the GitHub Copilot app in the current directory

Add defaultMode and defaultPermissionMode settings to choose startup mode and approval behavior for new interactive sessions

Add --with-token to copilot login to read an auth token from stdin

Add support for Gemini 3.7 Flash

Add Ctrl+E in /sandbox to open settings.json in your editor

Add per-agent usage metrics to --usage-output-file JSON output

Repeated read_agent calls now consistently return the full turn history unless since_turn is provided

Hook lifecycle events (hook.start/hook.end) from hooks inside a subagent are now recorded on that subagent's session and re-emitted on its parent, instead of being dropped on an internal session.

Repeatedly resuming the same session no longer crashes while telemetry is being replaced

An MCP server blocked by an enterprise policy now shows as blocked in /mcp instead of spinning as pending forever

Fixed an indefinite "Loading…/Resuming…" hang at startup when a repository plugin activates a contributed extension (or another extension reload races the initial load), which previously left the environment stuck on "still waiting on extensions"

Vim mode badge stays visible beside the activity indicator during turns

The startup status finishes after extension configuration during plugin reconciliation

Signing out of an account now clears its cached enterprise managed settings, so signing back in generally re-fetches the policy rather than re-applying the one cached before sign-out

An enterprise managed-settings policy is no longer rejected when permissions.disableBypassPermissionsMode carries an unrecognized value; it is now logged and enforced as disable.

Sandboxed builds on Windows create their scratch caches on first run, so cargo, go, Gradle, and ccache work without a warm cache

On macOS and Linux, shell commands resolve the same tools a bash login shell does, including project environments activated from a profile

Canvas windows open and refresh in the background instead of stealing focus from your terminal

A prompt sent while the agent is working no longer leaves a second copy of itself stuck as (pending) at the bottom of the transcript after it has been answered

Turning allow-all off from an ACP client now reaches the permission engine whenever there is a runtime override or auto-approval to revoke, so the setting can no longer report success while permissions stay enabled (a baseline granted by --allow-all-* launch flags is still deliberately left intact)

A failed tool call no longer stacks its (MCP: server) label one character per line down the timeline — the label and the error now share the row, with the longer side truncating

Agents, skills and MCP servers contributed by installed plugins are no longer dropped in non-interactive (-p) runs, so --agent : works headlessly without --plugin-dir

Typing $ and pressing Enter opens the interactive shell again, instead of clearing the prompt and doing nothing

The prompt frame now renders in terminals it previously skipped, such as foot and alacritty, instead of a fixed list

A prompt queued while the agent is working stays visible instead of vanishing when you send another one

The sessions sidebar's keyboard cursor is visible again, and selected rows in the Select family, the diff viewer and custom picker rows now pair the selection fill with the text color derived for it.

Keys sent to an unfocused terminal pane are no longer dropped: Enter and other keystrokes are handled even after a terminal focus-out report, so tmux and agent multiplexers can drive a background pane

Compact the autopilot goal panel to its identity row on a short terminal (a paused goal keeps its resume note), with ctrl+x → g to expand or collapse it by hand

Render the autopilot goal panel as a pinned prompt frame, drop its progress bar for the exact todo count, fold the subagent hint into the row it toggles, and keep its metrics on a narrow pane

Resume large sessions faster by showing recent history first while older messages load.

x is now the delete key everywhere: /sandbox config, /settings, /mcp, the sessions dialog and the diff comments summary move off d

Auto mode now adapts model selection as your task evolves during a conversation

/plugin now flags installed plugins and marketplaces that have a newer version upstream, and offers an Update action to pull it

Show your last prompt as the inferred objective in the Autopilot status panel

When --no-sandbox is ignored because enterprise policy could not be determined, the notice now says so, and no longer points at an administrator, instead of claiming a policy requires the sandbox. The unsupported-host warning says the same rather than contradicting it.

Show model data retention warnings with links in the /model picker

Path-sourced plugins in a local (directory-source) marketplace now load live from their real directory, so editing one takes effect on /restart or a new session — no /plugin update

Skills and custom agents are discovered from directories added with --add-dir

Use Ctrl+Space to toggle voice dictation.

A session sandboxed by an enterprise managed policy now says so on the timeline, including when the policy arrives mid-session, instead of leaving the footer's sandbox chip as the only hint that commands are being restricted

forceRemoteSettingsRefresh now fails closed: when set, the cached managed-settings policy is never served or used as a fetch-failure fallback (skipping both the 1h fast path and the 24h stale fallback), so a failed startup fetch blocks on the unconfirmed policy instead of reverting to a possibly-stale cached one. Concretely, until a fresh policy is fetched the session applies the restrictive undetermined-policy posture: non-default MCP servers are blocked, bypass-permissions mode cannot be enabled, and policy-gated plugin install/update mutations are blocked

ACP clients receive subagent IDs, raw event subscriptions, and live title, mode, command, and plan updates

Show each user instruction file separately in /instructions

Managed settings now win per entry for enabledPlugins and extraKnownMarketplaces, so a plugin or marketplace your organization pins can't be overridden locally

Use x to remove scheduled /every and /after prompts in Schedule Manager

Update model configurations

Removed the PLUGINS_DASHBOARD opt-out and the legacy skills picker it kept alive. /skills, bare /mcp, and /mcp show (with no server name) always open the dashboard; /mcp config still opens the dedicated MCP wizard.

Removed /plugins; its resources moved to /plugin, /mcp and /skills, with /subagents and /instructions for agents and instructions.

Enabling and disabling hooks and LSP servers is temporarily unavailable: those toggles existed only in the /plugins dashboard that this release removes.

New

The plugins dashboard is available to everyone: run /plugin, /mcp, or /skills. Set PLUGINS_DASHBOARD=false to opt out of it and the copilot plugins command.

Improved

x is now the delete key everywhere: /sandbox config, /settings, /mcp, the sessions dialog and the diff comments summary move off d

Auto mode now adapts model selection as your task evolves during a conversation

/plugin now flags installed plugins and marketplaces that have a newer version upstream, and offers an Update action to pull it

Show your last prompt as the inferred objective in the Autopilot status panel

When --no-sandbox is ignored because enterprise policy could not be determined, the notice now says so, and no longer points at an administrator, instead of claiming a policy requires the sandbox. The unsupported-host warning says the same rather than contradicting it.

Fixed

Fixed an indefinite "Loading…/Resuming…" hang at startup when a repository plugin activates a contributed extension (or another extension reload races the initial load), which previously left the environment stuck on "still waiting on extensions"

Vim mode badge stays visible beside the activity indicator during turns

The startup status finishes after extension configuration during plugin reconciliation

Removed

Removed /plugins; its resources moved to /plugin, /mcp and /skills, with /subagents and /instructions for agents and instructions.

Enabling and disabling hooks and LSP servers is temporarily unavailable: those toggles existed only in the /plugins dashboard that this release removes.

Added

• Add xhigh reasoning effort support for Grok 4.6

Improved

• Path-sourced plugins in a local (directory-source) marketplace now load live from their real directory, so editing one takes effect on /restart or a new session — no /plugin update
• Skills and custom agents are discovered from directories added with --add-dir

Fixed

• Signing out of an account now clears its cached enterprise managed settings, so signing back in generally re-fetches the policy rather than re-applying the one cached before sign-out

Added

Startup now offers to restore sessions that were still open when their CLI went away, so a crash or a machine restart no longer means reopening each terminal by hand

models.list now includes service-published infoMessages and warningMessages per model

Add copilot app to open the GitHub Copilot app in the current directory

Improved

Use Ctrl+Space to toggle voice dictation.

A session sandboxed by an enterprise managed policy now says so on the timeline, including when the policy arrives mid-session, instead of leaving the footer's sandbox chip as the only hint that commands are being restricted

forceRemoteSettingsRefresh now fails closed: when set, the cached managed-settings policy is never served or used as a fetch-failure fallback (skipping both the 1h fast path and the 24h stale fallback), so a failed startup fetch blocks on the unconfirmed policy instead of reverting to a possibly-stale cached one. Concretely, until a fresh policy is fetched the session applies the restrictive undetermined-policy posture: non-default MCP servers are blocked, bypass-permissions mode cannot be enabled, and policy-gated plugin install/update mutations are blocked

Fixed

An enterprise managed-settings policy is no longer rejected when permissions.disableBypassPermissionsMode carries an unrecognized value; it is now logged and enforced as disable.

Sandboxed builds on Windows create their scratch caches on first run, so cargo, go, Gradle, and ccache work without a warm cache

On macOS and Linux, shell commands resolve the same tools a bash login shell does, including project environments activated from a profile

Added

• Add defaultMode and defaultPermissionMode settings to choose startup mode and approval behavior for new interactive sessions
• Add --with-token to copilot login to read an auth token from stdin

Improved

• ACP clients receive subagent IDs, raw event subscriptions, and live title, mode, command, and plan updates
• Show each user instruction file separately in /instructions
• Managed settings now win per entry for enabledPlugins and extraKnownMarketplaces, so a plugin or marketplace your organization pins can't be overridden locally

Fixed

• Canvas windows open and refresh in the background instead of stealing focus from your terminal

Added

Add --enable-mcp-server to re-enable MCP servers disabled in settings for the current run

A session shared with another CLI now says so: in --ahp mode a row for a session you have joined leads with 2 clients (or more) when somebody else is attached to it, in both the Sessions tab and the sidebar, and /ahp status reports the same number. Presence is announced on attach and refreshed on a heartbeat, so a client that joins shows up at once and one that goes away stops being counted

/ahp cloud <environment-id> puts a Mission Control environment in the Sessions tab's source picker alongside your local daemons, so the compute --cloud runs on is somewhere you can switch to with h and create sessions on — marked CLOUD, because Mission Control wakes it on connect and this CLI cannot start or stop it

/ahp codespace <name> forwards a Codespace's copilotd port to your machine with gh and puts it in the Sessions tab's source picker, so a session running in a Codespace is one h away. It is named after the Codespace and marked CS, the tunnel closes when you exit or with /ahp stop <name>, and a missing codespace scope tells you the gh auth refresh line to run

--ahp now finds the AHP daemons already running on your machine and puts them in the Sessions tab's source picker, so a host you started in another terminal is there without being named again -- including one you start while the CLI is open. Turn it off with COPILOT_AHP_DISCOVER=0

In --ahp mode the Sessions tab and the sidebar now list the host's sessions — including ones started by another CLI — so enter joins a session running elsewhere, n creates the new session on the host, and closing a row disposes it there for every attached CLI; each host row shows whether that session is running, waiting on input, or idle right now, and the busy ones sort to the top of the host's list; every row that lives on the host is marked with it, including the sessions you have already joined, so a shared session no longer reads like a private local one, and a host session is listed once instead of reappearing lower down as a stale local copy of itself

In --ahp mode the Sessions tab and the sidebar now show the host itself above the list — which daemon these sessions come from, what it is running (copilotd 0.6.5), and whether it is still answering — so a host that stops responding is visible instead of leaving every host row on screen as a photograph; losing the host is also announced once in the timeline, since that is rarely the screen you are looking at, and /ahp status now reports the same identity and health plus whether this CLI started the daemon or attached to one that was already running

/ahp start [port], /ahp stop <host> and /ahp restart <host> manage the AHP daemons themselves from inside the CLI. start serves the current directory, so it is the fix for a healthy host refusing a new session with permission denied; stop only ever signals a process it can see is an AHP host on this machine, waits for the socket to close, and asks for --force before disconnecting the session you are in; restart relaunches on the workspace the daemon was already serving (staff-only for now: --ahp and /ahp are gated on the AHP_CLIENT feature flag)

The Sessions tab now shows where its sessions come from -- this CLI process first, then every AHP daemon you named -- with each host's health beside it, and h switches between them. --ahp and COPILOT_AHP_URL take a comma-separated list of hosts, /ahp connect <url> adds one live, /ahp hosts lists them and /ahp use <host> switches from the timeline. The list shows only the selected source's sessions and n creates there, so attaching to a host is no longer a one-way door away from your local sessions

copilot --ahp attaches the CLI to an Agent Host Protocol host, so sessions live on the host instead of in the CLI: several terminals can attach to the same session and watch its turns stream live, /ahp sessions|attach|new reaches the host's session list, and a bare --ahp starts a local host when none is running; typing while a turn is streaming — including a turn another terminal started — behaves as it does locally: enter steers the prompt into the running turn, ctrl+q queues it for the next one, ctrl+c takes it back, and every attached terminal sees it either way (staff-only for now: --ahp and /ahp are gated on the AHP_CLIENT feature flag)

Add /plugin marketplace update [name] to refresh marketplace catalogs

Add support for MAI Code 1.1 Flash

Add --usage-output-file to write final usage metrics to a JSON file

Set explicit objectives with /autopilot without experimental mode

Improved

--cloud now puts the environment it provisions in the Sessions tab's source picker, so the compute your cloud session runs on is somewhere you can switch back to, create more sessions on, and inspect with /ahp

/ahp codespace now accepts the display name you gave a Codespace, not just the auto-generated one gh prints — and when the name matches nothing it lists the Codespaces you do have, or says the account has none, instead of reporting a 404 URL

The Sessions tab's source strip is now drawn as the same chip the filter: scope selector uses -- the source in force is a bold value on a filled badge, in the same fonts, foregrounds and backgrounds -- instead of a hand-rolled line of ASCII brackets and glyphs in a visual language of its own. It keeps its own line directly above filter: and still names every source -- each daemon marked AHP so it is clear the sessions are not this process's -- separated by the same · a session card uses, with h moving the highlight along it. Every entry reserves the badge's padding whether or not it is selected, so the line never re-flows as the highlight moves. Each host's health rides on the colour of its own entry, and where the line cannot hold every source -- the docked sidebar is around 42 columns -- it collapses to the source in force and counts what it could not draw, instead of silently truncating the selected host's address mid-number

Show LSP progress percentages in all service states and clear them when progress ends

Spec plugins that leave commands, agents, rules, hooks, LSP or MCP config at the plugin root now report the file and where to move it, instead of losing the component silently

MCP server timeout settings now apply to tool discovery, with a 30-second default so slow servers can load their tools reliably.

Improve CLI rendering performance for streaming assistant output

Show per-file headers when viewing expanded multi-file apply_patch diffs

Show /autopilot and /goal objective hints in slash-command autocomplete

Show structured ask_user forms by default in interactive CLI sessions

When an enterprise policy requires the sandbox, --no-sandbox now explains that it was ignored instead of silently having no effect.

extraKnownMarketplaces "autoUpdate" is now honored from managed (MDM/server) settings too, not just user settings

Fixed

copilot --ahp no longer fails with "no AHP host is listening" when daemons are running — it attaches to one already on this machine (preferring one whose workspace covers your directory) instead of insisting on the default address, and only reports a failure when there is genuinely nothing to attach to and none can be started

/clear and /new are available again on a session that lives on an AHP host, and they now replace it on that host. Previously they were hidden because they built the replacement session locally: the timeline looked cleared, but every prompt after it ran in this process instead of on the host, and no other attached CLI could join it

A --ahp host reached with a connection token (--ahp "wss://host:8765?tkn=…", how a Codespace or LAN host is protected) no longer prints that token back: /ahp status, the /ahp session lists, the connection errors and the host-status notices all redact the query string, so a transcript can be shared without leaking it. A host that refuses the upgrade with 401 now says the connection token is what it wants

An --ahp session now runs in the directory you started the CLI from, when the host's workspace covers it, instead of always at the host's workspace root — so a daemon serving a parent directory no longer puts your agent in the wrong project

Host skills no longer vanish from an --ahp session moments after it opens: a relay reconnect snapshot that omits customizations is no longer read as "the host has none"

The status line no longer sits on Loading: … — still waiting on extensions for the whole life of a session that runs in another process — every --ahp session, and Mission Control remote sessions too. The CLI cannot load its extensions into a session it does not own, and now reports that instead of waiting forever

copilot init no longer silently drops --sandbox / --no-sandbox. The flag now applies to the init session, subject to the same feature gating and enterprise sandbox floor as other entry points.

Sandboxed MCP servers launched with npx or uvx now get a writable Copilot-owned package cache, plus the Windows toolchain and Playwright browser grants they were missing (needs dev-tool access)

A sandbox readonlyPaths entry nested inside your working directory now blocks writes from the built-in file tools

Turning off sandbox.allowDevToolAccess now also withholds the tool directories discovered on PATH and in toolchain environment variables, such as a relocated CARGO_HOME.

Footer AI credit total updates as background subagents spend, instead of waiting for the next turn

Moved unknown and ineffective settings into an actionable /settings Problems tab and cleaned up retired CLI-owned keys

Pressing Enter now always acts on your message instead of sometimes leaving it in the queue

Very large sessions no longer fail to load their history after a rewind or a compaction

Removed

Breaking: Agent Plugins spec plugins now read commands/, agents/, rules/, hooks/hooks.json, lsp.json, and extensions/ only under com.github.copilot/ — no longer from the plugin root