With GitHub Copilot coding agent, you can delegate tasks to Copilot that it will work on in the background while you focus on something else.

Copilot coding agent is now deeply integrated into Visual Studio Code with the latest release of the “GitHub Pull Requests” extension.

Delegating a task to Copilot

Want to switch to another task and let Copilot finish up what you were doing? Spotted a bug, potential refactor, or documentation gap you want to fix without getting distracted from what you’re doing?

Once you’ve installed the “GitHub Pull Requests” extension, you can hand a task over to Copilot from VS Code by invoking the #copilotCodingAgent tool from Copilot Chat’s “Ask” mode.

Starting a Copilot coding agent session from VS Code

Copilot will typically do some research and scoping locally in your IDE, and when it’s ready to shift the task to the background, it’ll ask for your confirmation.

Once you click Continue, Copilot will open a draft pull request and work in the background in a cloud development environment powered by GitHub Actions. You’ll see a link to the draft pull request in the chat window.

Tracking what Copilot is working on

You can track Copilot’s progress on tasks from the “Copilot on My Behalf” section in the GitHub tab in VS Code. Copilot’s pull requests in the current repository are shown in the list, with an icon showing you if Copilot is done or still working.

'Copilot on my Behalf' section in the GitHub tab in VS Code

You can click on a pull request in the list and then click View session to see Copilot’s detailed logs.

Viewing Copilot coding agent's logs in VS Code

Learn more about Copilot coding agent

Copilot coding agent is available in public preview for all users with Copilot Pro or Copilot Pro+, as well as Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise users where an administrator has enabled the relevant policy.

Visual Studio Code isn’t the only place where you can delegate tasks to Copilot. Copilot coding agent is also integrated into github.com, GitHub Mobile, the GitHub CLI, and the GitHub MCP Server. To find out more about Copilot coding agent, head to our documentation.