GitHub Copilot

Content exclusions reached general availability in the Copilot app and CLI for Business and Enterprise customers: the tools now respect exclusion policies configured by enterprise, organization and repository administrators, so Copilot won't use excluded files as context — protecting sensitive code across agentic workflows. ↗

In public preview, every Copilot code review now includes an approval assessment, and admins can authorize Copilot to submit approvals that count toward a repository's required-approvals rule. Approvals are off by default, configurable at enterprise, organization and repository level, with repository admins able to limit which file paths Copilot may approve. Approvals are dismissed when new commits land; an assessment alone does not count toward merge requirements. ↗

The August 2026 Copilot release for VS Code adds side-by-side chats for comparing agent runs, a /btw command for side conversations that share the primary chat's context, customizations installed per the Agent Plugins 1.0 standard, and model switching between Anthropic and Copilot subscriptions inside Claude sessions. An experimental /rubber-duck command asks a complementary model for second opinions. ↗

The August update to GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio 2026 lets org and enterprise owners publish custom agents for use across their repositories, auto-detected in the agent picker with the org source shown. It adds Low/Medium/High reasoning-effort settings per model, and extends the Git agent to review uncommitted changes or commits before a PR is opened, with findings inline in Git Changes for both GitHub and Azure DevOps repos. ↗

GitHub Copilot code review now covers two PR types it previously couldn't: bot-authored PRs (including Copilot's own cloud agent) and large PRs, with the old 300-file / 20,000-line limit removed. Reviewers resolving a comment can now record a reason — Addressed, Won't fix, or Incorrect — giving the agent better signal on what to fix. ↗

Public preview of the new GitHub Copilot experience in Slack. Mention @GitHub in DMs, channels, or threads to start an agent session that answers code questions, triages bugs, investigates failures, and opens pull requests. Slack Code (with GitHub as launch partner) is a dedicated code channel type that keeps agent tasks focused; sessions are multiplayer so teammates can see how each other prompt the agent. Available to Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise orgs. ↗

Public preview of shared agentic work with GitHub Copilot in Microsoft Teams. Mentioning @GitHub turns a thread into a collaborative agent session that can investigate, open pull requests, and hand off to the Copilot app, terminal, or IDE for the next leg. Repository admins can require an extra approval for PRs opened from Teams, putting a human checkpoint in the loop. ↗

Canvases are durable, shared surfaces in the Copilot app where developers and agents interact on work rather than chat alone. Each phase of work — assessment, planning, migration, validation — is inspectable and persistent, so teams can see what stage the agent is in, what decisions were made, and where approval is needed, instead of scrolling through long chat history. ↗

GitHub ships four Copilot agent apps that scope, secure, roll out, and ship features across the SDLC without leaving GitHub. Same day, Grok 4.6 lands in the Copilot model picker for VS Code, Copilot CLI, and cloud agents (admin-enabled on some enterprise plans) at $2/M input, $6/M output. ↗