Copilot Workspace Feedback

[ThisIsKirsch]

Looking for Product Feedback

Copilot Workspace is now in Public Preview, and you can sign up for the waitlist!

We've loved all the feedback given to use during the technical 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?

[skylar-anderson]

We don't have exact plans yet, but adding more IDE extensions is something we are considering in the future :)

[diachromemis]

Is there a specific feature or tool you’re curious about being supported in Visual Studio in the future?

[detty-down]

Have you tried using VSCode or a browser to access the current features? If yes, how was your experience?

[dpewaal-iba]

Is there any tool or extension in Visual Studio that you think needs improvement or additional support?

[beingminimal]

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

[beingminimal]

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

ok thanks.

[PierrunoYT]

Would love to get Higher Rate Limits

[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.

[jagerman777hx]

When you encounter difficulties in reordering files in your plan, have you ever tried using any tools or methods to address this issue?

[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.

[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! :)

[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.

[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!

[bannsec]

when clicking the button to push my changes to the same branch i was editing on, it always goes to pushing to new branch instead. even though it says "push to same branch" when i click on it it's actually pushing to a new branch.

[gwtaylor]

I encountered the same issue today, using GitHub workspace for the first time. I think it's a bug. I confirm that I was able to proceed with push to new branch -> create PR from new branch -> merge the PR into the branch I originally intended (edit branch). So I don't believe it's a permissions issue.

Here are the various options displayed:

I select the second option "Push to current branch.. Push to branch 9-updating-introduction-and-instructions".

Unexpectedly, this brings up a dialog to "Push to new branch":

The reason I am trying to push to the current branch is that I am working on a PR that is already open. I wanted to make some changes with Copilot Workspace and push to that branch, updating the PR.

The workaround is to push to a new branch, open a new PR from that new branch to the branch the PR is based on, and merge the new PR but it's a bit inconvenient.

[SmartManoj]

Discarded file changes are not updated. Link

[bannsec]

Very hard to keep track of feedback in this discussions thread... The discord one would notify me and was a lot cleaner to understand. I find myself getting lost in pages of feedback here not even sure where my own feedback is on the page.

[SmartManoj]

Unsubscribed from the thread. May be reply and mention will notify.

[bannsec]

Yeah looking at my emails it seems that's the only thing to do. Dropping all these feedbacks into a single discussion thread is simply chaos. Not sure why they don't realize it.

[okineadev]

There is an error in Copilot Workspace that prevents me from creating a PR:

It must be some kind of bug in your code

Response from https://copilot-workspace.githubnext.com/api/v1/accept:

{
    "message": "Not Found - https://docs.github.com/rest",
    "stack": "HttpError: Not Found - https://docs.github.com/rest\n    at /app/node_modules/@octokit/core/node_modules/@octokit/request/dist-node/index.js:125:21\n    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)\n    at async requestWithGraphqlErrorHandling (file:///app/node_modules/@octokit/plugin-retry/dist-bundle/index.js:36:20)\n    at async Job.doExecute (/app/node_modules/bottleneck/light.js:405:18)"
}

[lloydchang]

I'm unable to select repositories that exist.

For example, I cannot select cline-cline-fka-saoudrizwan-claude-dev even though it exists at https://github.com/lloydchang/cline-cline-fka-saoudrizwan-claude-dev

Nothing appears when I type or copy and paste the repository name verbatim into the text box.

Is it because I have many repositories at https://github.com/lloydchang?tab=repositories ?

I'm unclear what I can do if I cannot select a repository that exists, and is a fork of another repository.

I want to select my fork.

While I can select the original repository that my fork is based on, that's not helpful because I have changes in my fork that I would like to iterate with.

Thank you!

[joesarre]

When I try to reopen a session with an open pull request the browser just hangs. https://copilot-workspace.githubnext.com/joesarre/adventure/pull/1?s=0bae

[tlatin]

When the hourly quota is exceeded, tell me when I can retry.

Ran into the quota limit, which provides the message:

Error implementing plan: 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.

I can't tell from this if the quota is a sliding window, or per hour (XX:00 to XX:59). It would be friendlier to provide information about when I can retry. Preferably the time in my local timezone, but given that timezones are hard, I would accept 'X minutes'.

[tlatin]

It's unclear how to change what branch is being worked on.

I want to change the branch I'm working on, but it's unclear how to do that. I understand that to keep the generated files, it will make sense to avoid any changes to the files used to generate the changes. But it should be possible to create a new branch and change where the code will be committed.

[satomic]

I have some feedback from customers who tried this cool feature:

---

1. Access Limitations

Users have reported that workspaces can only be accessed approximately 3 times per day, after which they can no longer open them. This raises the following questions:

• What are the exact rules or limitations regarding workspace access?
• Is this a deliberate restriction for the preview phase, or is it a bug?

A clearer explanation would help users better manage their expectations and usage patterns.

2. AI Behavior Issues

During conversations with the AI, users have noticed the following problems:

• Stubborn Responses: The AI is often rigid in its suggestions and does not adapt well to alternative approaches.
• Outdated Coding Style: The AI tends to favor implementing business logic with SQL instead of more appropriate languages like Java. Interestingly, users have pointed out that Copilot in VSCode does not exhibit this behavior and aligns well with modern coding standards. Could this discrepancy be explained or addressed?

3. Request for Custom Instructions

Users have suggested adding a feature similar to Custom Instructions, which could allow them to guide the AI's behavior in workspaces. For example:

• Setting preferences for coding style or conventions.
• Directing the AI to favor specific languages or methodologies.

Is there any plan to implement a feature like this in the future?

---

thank you so much~

[ehalsey]

Workspaces is great for the most part. In summary, it initially saves about 70% of time for doing tasks like adding a new entity to a full stack React solution. Unfortunately, I've had to spend 25% of time cleaning up "bugs" or "issues" it introduces so it nets about a 50% time savings which is still amazing but a bit frustrating b/c the "issues" tend to be different each time. Happy to record a demo of the process I'm using if anyone is interested.

[samsmithnz]

I've noticed that Workspaces, fairly consistently, strips all comments out of files. It would be great to not do this.

[jcdotio]

• I like to pin my chat window at the left of the main workspace. When using send file to chat, etc it goes to the original chat tab - which is annoying - would be nice to make sure this target is right when chat is pinned
• I usually get better results using the llm's original chat interface vs copilot. This is a bit of a bummer since @workspace and other commands are so great. In general over the last 3-6 months the results I get seem to be not as good as when originally released - not sure if true or not but seems to imo.

[PACHAKUTlQ]

There are checkboxes before each item of the plan of every file, marking what steps have already be implemented. However, it seems users cannot manually set status. If you manually edit a file, fix a bug or improve the text of items in plan, the item status may not be correct anymore (and sometimes automatically unchecked). Knowing something is implemented but not marked as done is annoying. (Even worse, maybe these status tell Copilot what to do when it later edits files? You definitely don't want Copilot mess up with your existing and working implementation.)
Plz allow manually setting status.

[jnt0rrente]

The checkboxes seem to be used to regenerate the marked files. I agree this is confusing, I also checked them expecting that to mark them as finished, not the opposite.

[jnt0rrente]

This has probably been said already, but the dropdown alternatives for "push to new branch" seem to be bugged - they all force you to create a new branch opening the same side panel. It would be great to commit directly to master or to the current branch - especially for quick and dirty projects, it is not great to have to leave the workspace editor in order to merge a pr for every change.

[Daniel-Silion-iConnect]

Can Copilot Workspace be used with Azure DevOps hosted Git repo?