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bug: 'web'/'search' tool-category aliases silently resolve to no bound tool in headless --agent dispatch #4023
When an agent's frontmatter declares tools using the category aliases web or search, those aliases silently resolve to no bound tool at all when the
agent is dispatched headlessly via copilot --agent <name> -p ... --allow-all-tools.
There is no error or warning — the agent simply has no web-fetch/web-search
capability, which is easy to miss since nothing fails loudly.
Other category aliases in the same position work correctly: read → view, edit → edit, shell → powershell, agent → task/read_agent/list_agents.
Only web and search are affected.
Any agent relying on the documented web/search category aliases for web
access has zero web tooling in headless dispatch, with no error surfaced
anywhere. We found this affected 5 of our own agent specs (including a
Chief-of-Staff-style orchestrator whose own web lookups were silently broken)
before switching to literal tool names as a workaround.
Suggested fix
Category-alias resolution for web/search should map to web_fetch/web_search
in headless --agent dispatch mode the same way shell correctly maps to
powershell and read maps to view.
Thanks for the clear repro. This is fixed in Copilot CLI v1.0.100: custom agents that declare the documented search, web or todo tool aliases now receive the matching tools (web -> web_fetch/web_search, search -> grep/glob) instead of silently getting none, and this applies to headless --agent ... -p runs as well. The same problem was also reported in #4594. If the aliases still resolve to nothing on the latest version, please reopen.
Triaged as part of a Copilot SDK backlog review, with help from GitHub Copilot.
Activity
patniko commentedon Oct 26, 2026
Thanks for the clear repro. This is fixed in Copilot CLI v1.0.100: custom agents that declare the documented
search,webortodotool aliases now receive the matching tools (web->web_fetch/web_search,search->grep/glob) instead of silently getting none, and this applies to headless--agent ... -pruns as well. The same problem was also reported in #4594. If the aliases still resolve to nothing on the latest version, please reopen.Triaged as part of a Copilot SDK backlog review, with help from GitHub Copilot.