GitHub Copilot weekly releases — August 24

Release

This week’s updates give you more control over how Copilot runs, from team sessions in Slack and Teams to customization across the app, CLI, and your IDE.

GitHub Copilot in Slack and Microsoft Teams

• Turn team conversations into shared agent sessions. Mention @GitHub to investigate problems, plan work, and make changes your team can follow and guide together.

GitHub Copilot app

• The Customize tab is now generally available, bringing MCP servers, plugins, skills, and canvases together in one place. - Turn Azure DevOps issues and pull requests into Copilot sessions from the Customize tab. - Work in your Linux environment with experimental support for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
• Split and move any tab to keep related work side by side.
• Send any browser preview straight to your external browser from the tab’s context menu.

Try the [Copilot app](https://github.com/features/ai/github-app?utm_source=app-download&utm_medium=changelog&utm_campaign=weekly-copilot-launches-aug-2026).

[GitHub Copilot CLI](#github-copilot-cli)

• Start every new session with your preferred execution and permission modes using defaultMode

anddefaultPermissionMode

. - Manage plugins, MCP servers, and skills more easily with new experiences in /plugin

,/mcp

, and/skills

. - Pick up where you left off by restoring sessions that did not exit cleanly, including sessions interrupted mid-turn.

• Get significantly faster performance now that Copilot CLI runs on a native Rust runtime, while its terminal interface remains built in TypeScript.

Install the [Copilot CLI](https://github.com/features/copilot/cli?utm_source=cli-install&utm_medium=changelog&utm_campaign=weekly-copilot-launches-aug-2026).

[GitHub Copilot for JetBrains](#github-copilot-for-jetbrains)

• Apply consistent enterprise controls for Copilot in JetBrains, including plugins, MCP servers, telemetry, and agent permission modes.

VS Code 1.135 release updates

• Continue recent Copilot or Claude agent sessions from other applications in VS Code.
• Get a second opinion from a complementary model to surface missed details and edge cases.
• Stay focused on your work with a new single-pane Agents layout, simpler session controls, and session details that are easier to find.
• See detailed chat usage by model for every chat turn.

Explore everything that’s new with VS Code 1.135 in the full release notes.

GitHub Copilot for Visual Studio

• Pin favorite models, hide unused ones, compare capabilities and costs, and adjust reasoning effort for each task.
• Share custom agents across your organization to standardize workflows and improve discovery.
• View Copilot plan consumption and manage premium model usage before reaching limits.
• Review uncommitted changes or individual commits with the Git agent before opening a pull request.

Install the latest version of Visual Studio with GitHub Copilot.