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?

[dpewaal-iba]

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

[kaunuto]

Are there any plans to expand support for Visual Studio in the future?

[vonidor01]

None of my third party are functioning. I'm not receiving notifications. I use Google primarily, but seems numbers I've interacted with previously aren't able to respond. I think it's firebase, which I despise. Something is preventing incoming traffic. I want all notifications in app messaging. I can't tell you how much I've been trying to fix problem. Does firebase, Google cloud, or aws hold messages? I'm baffled

[Reunt]

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

[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.

[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.

[PierrunoYT]

Would love to get Higher Rate Limits

[hetsaraiya]

What are the rate limits can you please mention the numbs if you can?

i am new on technical preview.

[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.

[aa131520]

How does the implementation of rate limits impact API usage, especially for projects involving automated testing or code generation?

[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?

[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.

[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?

[kanahamppari]

What strategies can be used to handle reordering files effectively when working with a large number of files in Copilot?

[zakkallen66]

What features would you like to see in a dedicated file reordering function?

[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

[kingwest56]

How can users provide feedback to encourage prioritization of specific IDE integrations?

[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.

[Dakatsuki3002]

What are the benefits of reducing the update frequency from weekly to bi-weekly during this phase?

[vyudh]

Are there any specific features you expect in CW's updates during the public preview?

[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.

[aa131520]

How can Brainstorming be used to query the current codebase and create a suitable task 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.

[weldyradek]

What improvements can be implemented to allow users to clarify or refine their plans and code steps within the workspace?

[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!

[mszkudelski]

Hi, I tried Workspace once and got "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."
Now every time I go back to Workspace I got this error.

[yihenghuang]

It would be nice to be able to choose which repo/issue we want to open in workspace, and choose which repo we are planning to make changes. Sometimes issues and code changes dont live in the same repo

Sometimes we manually created a PR and want to workspace to finish the rest. I hope we can also properly open a PR or branch in the workspace. Currently we can paste the PR link but the workspace is still creating a new branch for me

[akulmehta]

This would be nice. An example of this is you could have your source code in one repo, but the docs in another. It would be nice to be able to update the docs repo based on the source code repo.

[Brycero]

Can't get the VS Code plugin to work.
Info 2025-01-17T20:11:44.955Z: Unexpected error while implementing plan: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open 'C:\tmp\cw-fs-ts' Error 2025-01-17T20:11:54.491Z: Error in syncSession: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open 'C:\tmp\cw-fs-ts'

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[jasonrclark]

Thanks for the report, we're looking into this now.

[jasonrclark]

@Brycero We've released 0.5.3 which should address this error. Can you try it out and let us know whether that fixes things for you?

[Brycero]

@jasonrclark Just tested 0.5.3 and it seems to be working as expected now, thanks.

[xornews]

Have you tried running VS Code as an administrator to rule out permission-related issues?

[SmartManoj]

Error: You do not have access to this repo. I tried to make a fork for you, but the fork operation took too long. The fork is probably ready. Try again?

But I already have a fork

More info

[whynotavailable]

The PR I made whynotavailable/finance-api#1.

When I had workspace update the PR, it made an empty commit name (didn't know that was possible). The link to the workspace in the pr also didn't update, so it still references the old conversation before the updates.

[ShlomoV5]

This is great.
One comment please, when already merged a PR generated by Copilot workspace, instead of updating the PR (meaningless) it should create a new PR....

[leighmcculloch]

The vscode extension syncs with all my issues, but no files on disk actually change. I see changes in the workspace, but then locally there are no changes when I've got the same session synchronised.

[Feod]

I love Copilot-Workspace, but I really wish I could just merge into branch rather than go through the pull-request loop. Only slows me down in what I'm trying to build.

[Gl1tchblade]

Wow its so good i love it, but its a little slow and I wish it had a mode to fully do things on its own

[dawnchan030920]

Create draft pull request still creates normal pr

[vosbek]

Hello, I was sent here from the discord.

I do not see any pins and cant see any definitive proof here. I am an active Copilot Pro subcriber. I was trying to get access to Github Copilot Workstation. The signup page takes me to: https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-workspace.

From there I click "Get Started with Copilot Workspace"

That leads me to the error:
"You don't have access to Copilot Workspace. If you think this is an error, try signing in again."

How do we get access to Github Copilot Workspace as an active copilot pro subscriber?

[Akash1134]

Hi @vosbek or anyone else getting the Access Denied message while trying to signup for Copilot Workspace, I wanted to share that our team is aware of this issue and working on it. There are some more reports in this discussion.

We've compiled basic troubleshooting steps in this documentation to help you self serve, I am listing them below:

• Make sure you have an active, paid copilot license. Trial licenses only allow access once the subscription is upgraded to a paid plan.
• At this time, enterprise-managed users (EMUs) aren’t supported, but support for EMUs is on the way.
• Ensure there are no trade restrictions on your account.
• Verify that any organization with Copilot enabled has both the Copilot Preview Features setting and the Copilot Extensions setting turned ON. If necessary, reach out to your organization’s administrator for assistance. For more details on configuring organization settings for Copilot, please refer to the documentation.

Thanks!

[akulmehta]

Currently, on the GitHub issues page if you click on "Open in Workspace" it automatically starts working on the main branch. Users should be allowed to select a branch on which this issue can be worked on because if the main branch is on a different version level (which is mostly a stable version) and your feature is on another development branch it is impossible to select the development branch in this workflow.

[przlplx]

All:

I just became aware of this conversation. So, it might be too late to be asking about this, but I'm hoping that someone can help me out regarding the text "suggestions" feature. I see only a brief mention of it here.

I understand that we're trying to integrate the latest features into everything, but I find "suggestions" to be highly annoying and intrusive. Perhaps it works well for coding. But for me, it opens on every other word, slowing me down and breaking my concentration. I'm practically wearing out the Esc key dealing with it. And if I don't cancel the feature in time, I end up typing characters that don't register or introducing incorrect text that I have to go back and correct.

I'd really like to turn off the feature. Is that possible? I checked the Command Palette, but see nothing relevant. There's a command to trigger "suggestions," but not one to disable them or toggle the feature on or off. Is it possible to do so? If not, could that please be added to the next version of the editor? I doubt that I'm the only one who would appreciate the option. Thank you!