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Bug

Copilot Feature Area

Copilot Agent Mode

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Problem Description

Copilot Agents have become significantly less effective due to a critical context loss issue. The main problems are:

Context Loss After Conversation Summarization

• After extended conversations, Copilot Agent loses important context
• This occurs specifically when "Summarized conversation history" appears
• The agent becomes unable to maintain continuity with previous discussion points

Solution Interruption

• When the agent is actively working on solving an issue and finds potential solutions, the "Summarized conversation history" feature suddenly activates
• This interruption causes the agent to lose track of both the problem context and proposed solutions
• The agent then enters an infinite loop, unable to recover the lost information

Suggested Solution

Revert to Previous Behavior:

• Return to the previous version's approach, where "Summarized conversation history" was not automatically triggered
• Instead of summarizing conversations, utilize memory management to retain context from older chat sessions

Request for Action

Please consider implementing an option to:

1. Disable automatic conversation summarization
2. Allow users to control when and how conversation history is managed
3. Provide better context retention mechanisms that don't interrupt active problem-solving sessions

This change would significantly improve the user experience and restore the tool's effectiveness for extended development sessions.

Steps To Reproduce

Prerequisites

VSCode (version >1.99) with the latest Copilot Chat extension (version > 0.26.7)

Reproduction Steps

Start a new Copilot Agent conversation

Open VSCode
Initiate Copilot Chat
Switch to Agent mode

Engage in extended conversation

Ask the agent to help solve a complex coding problem
Continue the conversation for 15-20 exchanges
Ensure the conversation involves multiple related

Working Fine

I found this version of Vscode, working fine (Update 1.99.3:) with Copilot Chat (0.26.7).

Related Discussion

• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/162256