Copilot Chat v0.40.0: Sessions, CLI, and Fixes

TL;DR

• Major focus on Sessions view, Copilot CLI improvements, and agent tooling
• Smarter inline edit rebasing and better cancellation token handling
• New troubleshoot skill and binary file support in tools

New

• Sessions view enhancements — Create PR and draft PR commands now always visible; improved action polish and title management
• Copilot CLI improvements — Plan exit approval, autopilot mode, steering support, and better session metadata tracking
• Troubleshoot skill — New skill for diagnosing chat issues; moved to file-based approach for better maintainability
• Binary file support — Tools can now read binary files with hexdump display
• Image viewing in read_file — Support for reading and displaying images directly through file tools
• Chat debug logging — Write chat debug events to disk as JSONL for diagnosis; per-file size capping to prevent unbounded growth
• MCP service integration — Integrated into ClaudeCodeSession for improved gateway management
• Proxy support for WebSocket — Better network configuration flexibility

Fixed

• NES debounce and language context — Now properly honor cancellation tokens
• NES server response handling — No longer errors when server response contains no choices
• Inline edit rebasing — Smarter rebase when user types in agreement with suggestion
• Worktree pending commits — Proper handling of pending commit changes in chat sessions
• Session log directory — Fixed sessionLogDir not being set for new chats
• Anthropic cache control — Stop evicting message-level cache breakpoints for Anthropic Messages API
• Tool invocation type casting — Removed unnecessary type casting for toolCallId
• Custom tool search — Enabled in agent tools, filtered invalid references, improved prompts
• Inline chat exit — Better handling of exit flow
• Simulate task on Windows — Fixed platform-specific issue

Breaking Changes

• MCP support in CLI disabled by default — Later re-enabled in v0.40.0; check your CLI configuration if upgrading
• Prompt/instructions variable rename — Adopted new variable ID naming convention; update custom prompts if using old names

Update via: code --install-extension GitHub.copilot-chat or check for updates in VS Code Extensions.

Source: Copilot Chat