Repository navigation
general purpose agent used instead of actual agent #935
Description
Describe the bug
Sometimes it uses a "general purpose" agenet (recently added to copilot-cil) instead of an actual defined agent (that has been working just fine till this release with general purpose agents)
I have an architect agent, the instructions reference how to use it, it picked that up "let me
invoke the architect" but then goes and uses a general purpose agent. Sometimes that general purpose agent will read the actual agent file, sometimes not.
If there is an actual agent, it must be used
Affected version
0.0.377 Commit: 4a0b36b
Steps to reproduce the behavior
- create an agent
- tell it to use said agent
- it uses a "general purpose" agent
Expected behavior
If an agent file / config exists, it must be used.
Additional context
No response
Activity
MRayermannMSFT commentedon Jan 13, 2026
@dogmatic69 thanks for opening this issue! This gives me some additional cofidence to push through some prompting changes regarding custom agent usage.
binhex commentedon Apr 17, 2026
yep im seeing this too, the selected agent is not used and in the cli ui you cannot see the agent name displayed, so there is something going on here, not sure on the version when the bug was introduced.
EDIT - FWIW based on the copilot cli ui only it appears that the agent bug is introduced in v1.0.30+, v1.0.29 displays the correct agent name at the bottom right of the ui.
patniko commentedon Oct 26, 2026
Thanks for the report. We've shipped fixes in this area since this was filed (most recently in Copilot CLI v1.0.51), and we believe this may now be resolved. Could you retest on the latest release (Copilot CLI v1.0.103) and let us know whether you still see it? If we don't hear back in a couple of weeks, we may close this issue — you can always reopen it.
Triaged as part of a Copilot SDK backlog review, with help from GitHub Copilot.