Bring back the GitHub Copilot in the CLI commands to not break workflows

[EDM115]

Important

After 6 month and still no word being heard from GitHub, the community started to roll their own version.
I will update this as more stand out.

• 🥇 shell-ai by @Deltik (comment)
  Cross-platform, cross-shell, works with lots of providers (funnily enough not GitHub lol). Requires an API key
• 🥈 @NSPC911's version (comment, download)
  PowerShell only, works with ollama and OpenCode (nice !), requires bat to be installed
• 🥉 My own implementation
  PowerShell only (yet), uses the official Copilot CLI and a free 0x cost model and uses the same old aliases. Can't refine a command yet, some issues with quotes, model change and prompt refinement to come later.

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Describe the feature or problem you'd like to solve

The Copilot in the CLI has been a regular part of my workflow, always useful for getting very quickly a command on the fly or explaining one. Bringing it back here would be a massive W.

Proposed solution

You could add the old features through either a command (/suggest, /explain), or directly with flags. The further behavior (copy/execute/refine) should be ideally kept.

Example prompts or workflows

Here are some prompts I did use :

copilot --suggest "in powershell, how  to reload the profile ?"

copilot --suggest "pwsh 7, windows, from the current directory and going recursively, list all folders containing files ending in '.fxp', echo the full path"

copilot --suggest "pwsh 7, recursively list all file extensions"

copilot --explain "ls -Ahosp --color=always --group-directories-first"

Additional context

No response

[RyanHecht]

Thanks for the feedback! I totally agree we should bring slash commands/quick flags to explain/suggest commands.

I would also like to plumb up smaller, more focused models to service these requests without consuming premium requests!

[leevs]

I was puzzled that this was no longer working anymore but indeed it's one core productivity gain that is gone.
What I did was use zsh-github-copilot plugin and then create a simple binding

bindkey '^\' zsh_gh_copilot_suggest

What does this do?
I can type: gcloud give me all vm's that have the following tag - press keyboard shortcut and I get the question replaced by the response.

I honestly don't care about all the fluff of what it does - just the command.
Hopefully this is something we can bring back!

[EDM115]

@RyanHecht bumping this since https://github.com/github/gh-copilot/releases/tag/v1.2.0

[EvanBoyle]

Now that we've shipped custom agents, you can technically implement this yourself: https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/use-copilot-agents/coding-agent/create-custom-agents

Would you mind taking a look and letting me know if this is sufficient?

[vbrozik]

@EvanBoyle

Now that we've shipped custom agents, you can technically implement this yourself

Maybe I am missing something but I did not find out how to:

• Use small LLM models which do not consume premium requests.
• Remove the requirement of copilot for access to the current working directory. I need a mode which does not depend on the current working directory and which will not access my local files.
• An option to not show the LLM usage summary after the answer would be useful.

Also it is disappointing that GitHub said (https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/use-copilot-agents/coding-agent/create-custom-agents):

We’re announcing the scheduled deprecation of the GitHub Copilot in the CLI extension for GitHub CLI (i.e., gh-copilot) which will stop working on October 25, 2025. This extension’s capabilities are being replaced by the new GitHub Copilot CLI, a fully agentic AI assistant that provides the full power of Copilot’s coding agent locally in your terminal.

but GitHub Copilot CLI is a very different tool for different use cases and it does not replace the capabilities of gh-copilot. The depreciation statement is simply wrong. Also gh-copilot was discontinued even before GitHub Copilot CLI was really released. It is still just a preview.

[EvanBoyle]

Got it, so you want a mode that just does a 1-shot call to the model, and does not do anything agentic?

[NSPC911]

Got it, so you want a mode that just does a 1-shot call to the model, and does not do anything agentic?

exactly said, i just want to see only the command, and be able to suggest changes copy to clipboard, or run the command (if shell function is used)

also a faster model instead of defaulting to sonnet 4.5, maybe grok code fast 1 instead, or whatever model the copilot extension used

[battaglia01]

+1 to this. I don't care how it's implemented - maybe Github just makes a custom agent or something for simple tasks and bundles it with everything - but a simple way to do ghcs/ghce type stuff would be great.