| title | Managing agent sessions | |||||||||
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| shortTitle | Manage agent sessions | |||||||||
| intro | Monitor an agent's progress in real time, steer it with follow-up prompts, and stop or archive sessions. | |||||||||
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| contentType | how-tos | |||||||||
| allowTitleToDifferFromFilename | true | |||||||||
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Use the agents panel on {% data variables.product.github %} to monitor and manage agent sessions across your repositories.
Track sessions from the agents panel (available from any page on {% data variables.product.github %}) or from the agents page. Sessions that you started, or that another user prompted {% data variables.product.prodname_copilot_short %} to work on, appear in your sessions list.
Click a session to open the session log and overview, where you can monitor the agent's progress, token usage, and session length.
Session logs show {% data variables.product.prodname_copilot_short %}'s internal reasoning and the tools it used to understand your repository, make changes, and validate its work. {% data variables.product.prodname_copilot_short %} has its own ephemeral development environment, so it can run automated tests and linters to validate changes before pushing.
Commits from {% data variables.copilot.copilot_cloud_agent %} are authored by {% data variables.product.prodname_copilot_short %}, with the person who started the task listed as co-author. Each commit message includes a link to the session logs, so you can trace why a change was made during code review or an audit. Commits are signed and appear as "Verified" on {% data variables.product.github %}.
If {% data variables.product.prodname_copilot_short %} is heading in the wrong direction, or you realize your original prompt needs adjusting, you can redirect it without stopping the session.
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Open the agents page and select the session.
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In the prompt box below the session log, type your follow-up. For example:
Use our existing ErrorHandler utility class instead of writing custom try-catch blocks for each endpoint. -
Press Enter. {% data variables.product.prodname_copilot_short %} implements your input after it finishes its current tool call.
Each steering message uses one premium request. Steering is not available for third-party coding agents.
If the task no longer needs to be done, or you want to start over with a new prompt, click Stop session in the session log viewer. Stopping a session ends the {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %} run and preserves any commits already pushed.
Archive stopped sessions to remove them from your sessions list.
- Open the stopped session.
- Click {% octicon "kebab-horizontal" aria-label="More actions" %}, then click {% octicon "inbox" aria-hidden="true" aria-label="inbox" %} Archive session.
- In the dialog, click Yes, archive.