Pick the repository and base branch when assigning issues to Copilot

[ebndev]

We're bringing you a range of additional options for assigning Copilot to issues as part of this public preview. When assigning an issue to Copilot coding agent, you can now choose which repository Copilot should work in, pick a starting branch, and provide additional instructions to give it more context.

CCA.issue.assign.mp4

Here’s what’s new:

• Start Copilot assignment in one click: Assign tasks directly to Copilot with the new Assign to Copilot button. This feature makes it easier and faster to start a Copilot assignment with a single click.
• Pick the target repository: Choose any repository you have access to, even if your issues and code don't live in the same place. Now you can work with Copilot across repositories, so it's easy to start assignments from issues no matter where your code is stored.
• Pick a starting branch: Choose which branch Copilot should start from. Whether you want Copilot to work off a feature branch, a bug fix branch, or any other starting point, you now have the flexibility to direct Copilot’s work to exactly where you want it.
• Add additional instructions: Give Copilot more context with optional instructions. You can provide specific guidance, requirements, or extra details to help Copilot understand exactly what you want to accomplish. This makes assignments more precise and helps Copilot deliver results that match your needs.

For more details, check out our documentation on assigning Copilot to an issue.

👇 Want to share feedback on this public preview or join the conversation? Please comment below!

Disclaimer: The UI for features in public preview is subject to change.

[SIkebe]

Add additional instructions: Give Copilot more context with optional instructions. You can provide specific guidance, requirements, or extra details to help Copilot understand exactly what you want to accomplish. This makes assignments more precise and helps Copilot deliver results that match your needs.

What’s the difference between giving instructions in a comment on an issue and this additional instructions?

[labudis]

@SIkebe The issue description (body comment) and the additional instructions are combined into a single set of instructions for Copilot. If you are happy with the context in the issue body, then there is no need to add any additional instructions. However, if you think of anything that could help Copilot in its assignment, the additional instruction prompts provide a low-friction opportunity to add that context without having to go back and edit the issue body.

[societystacktrace]

Seems broken. Getting errors - on mobile (iOS) and web. Worked earlier - now fails.

Assignment failed: Please check that the selected repository and branch are valid.

[MoritzRohleder]

I got the same Issue with my repository. I created the issue in the Repository that the code is in and the branch is the default branch. Even the dirty workaround of changing the base branch temporarily didn´t work.

[lukewar]

Hey @MoritzRohleder, thanks for the note! Are you seeing this consistently across all issues when assigning Copilot, or only in specific cases?

[MoritzRohleder]

It's consistent on all issues within the same repository yes. I haven't had a chance to test it in another repository yet though

[kaushal98]

I am seeing this too. Trying it for the first time though.

[kaushal98]

Ok turns out, despite the error above, The task was indeed assigned to Copilot and it opened a draft a PR

[NourEldinShobier]

Thanks for this cool feature. But how can I automate it using the GraphQL API?

I tried to follow this doc and it successfully creates the issue via GraphQL and assigns Copilot it with no issue.

However, Copilot doesn't start working automatically on the issue. So I was wondering how to configure these new popup values via GraphQL so that Copilot starts on its own

[NourEldinShobier]

@GomanovNA Did you ensure all permissions needed are set the same way @lumaxis mentioned above? That's what fixed it for me

[GomanovNA]

@NourEldinShobier I think I do have all permissions necessary (even though it was working with less then that like 2 weeks ago), I even regenerated token and then used new one in my Azure logic app

but still Copilot is not starting action, I just see it's assigned to issue, but no activity happens(

[owenniblock]

@GomanovNA it looks from the screenshot like you're selecting Codespaces rather than "Code" which @lumaxis referenced above. In the UI it's called Contents - sorry for the confusion. Please try this and let me know if it's still not working.

We're working behind the scenes on improving this part of the system so hopefully we'll make it a bit more friendly soon.

[GomanovNA]

Yep, thank you all guys, finally it worked with this list of permissions in token!

[owenniblock]

Great, thanks for letting us know @GomanovNA 👍🏼

[mitchelsellers]

This is a helpful feature, however, I have been simply providing instructions in the issue for this in the past, which is traditionally how I would provide any custom instructions to my development teams. So in a lot of ways this actually adds a step to my process.

For example, if something was to be done targeting a specific hot-fix branch, it would be part of the issue requirements, and historically CoPilot has actually caught that behavior without any issues in the past.

The additional instructions, that's pretty nice though, to separate AI instruction from human.

[mitchelsellers]

@labudis Sorta - Now I have to add/select additional information that may already be inside the ticket. In my example above, I have to duplicate the information that was in the ticket and choose the proper branch. Not a huge deal, just a shift that could be something missed, especially if I'm trying to bulk assign items to copilot, etc, I then have to manually grab/update things

[owenniblock]

@mitchelsellers the contents of the Issue still get send to Copilot as before so you should just be able to leave the custom instructions blank and not change the repo and branch and it will be using the same details as it would previously when you assigned Copilot.

Same goes for bulk assignment on the Issues list etc.

[mitchelsellers]

Ok, so it will ignore the set value in that case? (I guess I can try it)

[owenniblock]

Let us know if it doesn't work as you'd expect and we'll take a look 🙂

[labudis]

@mitchelsellers the additional prompt is completely optional. It simply gets appended to the issue description so if you are happy with the issue body there is no need to add anything else, and you can simply go ahead with the assignment.

[RMagician]

great feature, love that you can now select a starting branch :) was an issue I was bumping into quite a bit

[labudis]

Thank you for the feedback! Curious, does this enable any new use cases for you?

[RMagician]

not necessarily but it saves me a whole lot of merge to main create new issue from main branch revert commit in main branch, so it has speeded up my workflow considerably. I'd been using mirrored repos as well so that this workflow wouldn't actually impact day to day ops, and now there's no need to :)

[ryaugusta]

Hey, I'm having an problem assigning Copilot an issue and targeting a specific repository. I'm not seeing all repositories that I have access to in that dropdown list, only a small subset of org/repo combinations. I tried adding a copilot environment (https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/use-copilot-agents/coding-agent/extend-coding-agent-with-mcp#customizing-the-built-in-github-mcp-server) with a fine-grained token but haven't been able to get that list to update. Is there a setting I'm missing?

[ryaugusta]

oh interesting, that's now working thank you. Is this a reflection of the copilot environment and token? Or will this dropdown be populated based on the users access?

[owenniblock]

@ryaugusta it's difficult to get the right line for searching for repos - we've opted for defaulting to search within the org where the issue exists (so if your issue lived in my-org/my-repo the initial list contains a mix of your most active repos, but when you search, it searches by default within my-org - the logic being that you're most likely to be assigning issues to repos within the same org).

If you need to search outside the org, entering my-other-org/ should allow you to find other repos but it's a bit fiddly in that case.

[ryaugusta]

thanks @owenniblock ! Makes sense to me.

[labudis]

@ryaugusta am I assuming correctly that you are looking to assign an issue from one Organization to another? I'd love to understand your setup/use case a little more as we assumed that most users will want to assign issues within the same organization. Thank you!

[ryaugusta]

Hey @labudis, that's correct. Essentially the use-case for my team is performing a migration from another SCM onto GitHub and then leveraging Copilot to do some tasks on the migrated repository. Once the repository is migrated we have to assign copilot to go to the target org/repo and perform those tasks.

[LayZeeDK]

Branch name when assigning an issue to Copilot

When assigning an issue to Copilot via the dialog in preview, the branch name Copilot creates is in the format copilot/fix-<uuid>. For easy checkout, I would like to revert to the branch name format copilot/fix-<issue-number>.

[programcsharp]

Yeah, this was one step forward, two steps back.

Please let us fully define the work branch name, either in the prompt/copilot instructions or with a format setting.

We'd like to do <issue-number>-friendly-branch-description.

[labudis]

Thanks for the feedback! We are exploring some improvements in this area :)

[LayZeeDK]

Thanks. It is really hard to keep track of all the UUIDs in the branch view, in local Git, and when creating a task PR to merge into another task PR.

[LayZeeDK]

Thanks for introducing well-named GitHub Copilot coding agent branches ❤️

[LayZeeDK]

On a touchscreen device, it is inconvenient that pressing Enter in the task dialog creates the task rather than make a line break. I have already created too many tasks with missing context 😬

How can I make a line break in the dialog on for example an iPad?

[owenniblock]

Thanks for reporting. Sorry for the inconvenience. The workaround for now will be to compose those instructions is some other editor, while we are working on a more permanent solution.

[LayZeeDK]

I figured out that on the iPad soft keyboard there is a Shift button that can be toggled and then hit Enter to make a line break like Shift+Enter on a physical keyboard.

I'm not sure what the best user experience is in this case though.

[LayZeeDK]

I figured out that the reason I’m confused by this is that other textareas on GitHub.com handle Enter as line break, for example when writing this comment or updating a PR description.

[TylerCode]

Love this feature, is nice that you can specify the branches and whatnot.

[louwers]

I am getting:

Assignment failed: Request could not be processed. Please try again or contact support if the issue persists

[monwolf]

I'm having the same problem. I'm going through an issue, assigning it to Copilot, and when it asks the branch, and you confirm it crashes

The error on the api is 422 Unprocessable Content
x-github-request-id: 0DEE:306226:5B1A43:758223:68F0C43B

[epaulsen]

@monwolf @louwers Same issue, here but I was able to resolve it.

When assigning an issue directly to github copilot, I got the same error message.
However, if I tried to give it a task via the dropdown at the top of the repository, it spit out a more detailed error message.

When i looked at the request in browser dev tools, it gave me this response:

{"message":"job cannot be created due to repository rules violation: [\"Commit author email restrictions apply (must match regex ***) due to repository rules\"]","errors":null}

Indeed. We do have an org-wide regex ensuring that all commits has a valid email.
After modifying the policy to allow <number_omitted>+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com , copilot coding agent started working happily.

[nadavsinai-philips]

HI Getting this reply too - Assignment Failed Assignment failed: Request could not be processed. Please try again or contact support if the issue persists.
the API response is 422 status with body
{"error":"Failed to create job for issue #14675: ","jobs":[]}
github request ID -
9C3D:638A6:31C4B5:76A81C:68FDDB9D
please advice, the copilot coding agent is working fine on our repositories we have, I am an admin for both types (working/non-working repos)

[kelsey-myers]

@nadavsinai-philips 👋🏾 Just looked into your request ID and it's due to the repository rules: {"message":"job cannot be created due to repository rules violation: [\"Branch creation is blocked due to repository rules\"]","errors":null} Copilot was unable to create a branch.

We're working on surfacing these kinds of errors in the UI - sorry for the inconvenience in the meantime!

[nadavsinai-philips]

@kelsey-myers thanks for that, apart from having that error surface to the user, may I suggest that copilot generated branch names will follow a naming scheme template that it possible for the user to control eg release//feat/copilot/-title
or something of the sort

[Munvik]

Great feature. Thank you

[luisotavio-dev]

Great feature, it's been very useful to me, thank you.
I'd like to suggest adding customizable branch names as well. I don't know if that's in the plans, but it would be very useful so I could sync the branch name with my feature, for example, in Trello.

If there's already a way to do this before Copilot starts, I apologize; I'm still learning how to use it completely.

Congratulations again on the incredible progress.

[humanchimp]

I absolutely love this lil guy overall. however, i keep seeing this

Exhibit: this has happened to me many times... it says to try again "in a few minutes". result? i get two PRs instead of 1 and then i end up needing to do at least 3x as much code review, because i have to compare the 2 prs and decide which one is better. then i have to code review the one i chose. this is a convenient bug for microsoft because it results in me paying 2x for metered copilot time 🤔

[PickHub]

When I click "Assign to Copilot" on an issue, I get this pop-up where I can select a custom agent. Is there an option to assign an issue (add_to_assignees) to Copilot with a Custom Agent via the REST API as well?

[PickHub]

More generally, can I assign issues to Copilot via the API? It doesn't work for me via the "Copilot" username.

[owenniblock]

@PickHub it's on our roadmap so hopefully you'll be able to do this soon.

[PickHub]

@owenniblock Great! That's both for assigning custom agents and just the general agent? Or should the latter work already? If yes, what's the correct assignee for that? I tried Copilot and copilot-swe-agent with no luck:

github.GithubException.GithubException: Validation Failed: 422 {"message": "Validation Failed", "errors": [{"message": "assignees copilot-swe-agent cannot be assigned to this issue", "value": ["copilot-swe-agent"], "resource": "Issue", "field": "assignees", "code": "invalid"}], "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/rest/issues/issues#create-an-issue", "status": "422"}

[adeds]

Why is the custom agent from the non-default branch not shown on this dropdown select?

[owenniblock]

Currently Custom Agents have to be defined on the default branch to be selectable in the Custom Agent picker. I can see that this functionality is not what you'd expect so I'll pass this feedback on to the responsible team 👍🏼

[adeds]

i see, got it @owenniblock , thank youuuu 👍

[stevei101]

I have just spent like an hour coding a custom copilot agent for ey repo and it is still not available from this drop down "Custom Agent" in this area (workflow)
what do I need to show it here. Thank you!

[zach-cohen-milliman]

It's your lucky day -- I suffered through this yesterday:

• If you're creating an organization-level custom agent, it needs to live in the agents folder created in the root of a repo called .github-private.
• If you're creating a repository-level custom agent, it needs to live in the .github/agents folder created in the root of the repo you want to use it in.
• The file the agent is defined in needs to be called <agent-name>-agent.md. You need to ensure that the syntax of this file is correct by navigating to the file preview in the repo in GitHub.com.
• The agent needs to be in the default branch of the repository, not a feature branch.

[stevei101]

[like] Steven Irvin reacted to your message:

…

________________________________ From: Zach Cohen ***@***.***> Sent: Sunday, November 2, 2025 7:33:41 PM To: community/community ***@***.***> Cc: Steven Irvin ***@***.***>; Comment ***@***.***> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [community/community] Pick the repository and base branch when assigning issues to Copilot (Discussion #173575) It's your lucky day -- I suffered through this yesterday: If you're creating an organization-level custom agent, it needs to live in the agents folder created in the root of a repo called .github-private. If you're creating a repository-level It's your lucky day -- I suffered through this yesterday: * If you're creating an organization-level custom agent, it needs to live in the agents folder created in the root of a repo called .github-private. * If you're creating a repository-level custom agent, it needs to live in the .github/agents folder created in the root of the repo you want to use it in. * The file the agent is defined in needs to be called <agent-name>-agent.md. You need to ensure that the syntax of this file is correct by navigating to the file preview in the repo in GitHub.com. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#173575 (reply in thread) >, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AACGJGA2Z43QWYEGLVRTVXD32ZFALAVCNFSM6AAAAACGR2CGAOVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTIOBVGI2TSMI >. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Munvik]

What is Custom Agent exactly?

[LayZeeDK]

Custom agents for GitHub Copilot (Coding agent) are smilar to Claude Code subagents.

[Munvik]

Thank you

[Puneet-Minhas]

Hi,

If I create a RuleSet with "Require Signed Commits" and assign the Issue to Coding Agent, I get the following error:

Is this a known issue?

[grahame-student]

Does anyone else have problems with the copilot created branches not appearing in many of the branch dropdowns in the browser?

Created a branch called copilot/remove-automake-generated-files.

However the main branches view isn't showing it.

The branches dropdown doesn't show it.

I can't run workflows with a manual_dispatch trigger against the copilot branches, as they don't appear in the dropdown lists.