Align Cloud Agent with Mission Control PR-decouple behavior

[Oregand]

VS Code's Cloud Agent flow was still doing a bunch of pre-PR work that Mission Control / CCA PR Decoupling no longer need.

Problems

1. A PR is created up front, with extra preflight work.
2. A modal asks the user to delegate / commit changes / push branch. Codex and Claude don't show this.
3. The agent behaves strangely in VS Code — fixates on copilot-instructions.md and appears to invent its own prompt.

The "strange prompt" behavior was caused by us summarizing the chat history and appending a body_suffix to problem_statement / pull_request.body_suffix before sending. Mission Control sends the raw prompt with a minimal pull_request block; this change matches that.

Changes

• Drop the delegate/commit/push modal. New-request path in chatParticipantImpl goes straight to delegate(). Permissive GitHub auth now kicks in via the standard non-modal createIfNone sign-in prompt.
• Send the raw user prompt. Stop calling IChatDelegationSummaryService.summarize (and trackSummaryUsage) on the delegation path. problem_statement is now the user prompt + resolved references only. extractPrompt usage for reading back PR bodies is unchanged.
• Match MC's minimal pull_request payload. Drop body_placeholder and body_suffix — keep title, base_ref, and optional head_ref. Matches internal/sweagentd/sweagentd.go in github/copilot-mission-control.
• Drop the pre-delegation git preflight. Removed detectedUncommittedChanges, checkBaseBranchPresentOnRemote, buildConfirmation, and handleConfirmationData. delegate() already falls back to the repo's default_branch when base_ref isn't supplied.
• Delete dead code. CopilotCloudGitOperationsManager is now unreachable — removed the whole file. body_suffix / formatBodyPlaceholder removed from copilotCodingAgentUtils.ts. SEEN_DELEGATION_PROMPT_KEY, validateMetadata, hasHistoryToSummarize, and the modal string constants are also gone.

Regressions fixed during review

After self-audit + independent critique, four behavior regressions from the first pass were addressed in a follow-up commit:

1. Current remote-tracking branch was ignored. The initial alignment commit always fell back to default_branch, which was broader than the unpushed-WIP case it was meant to cover. Now: if the active repo matches the selected repo and RepoContext.upstreamBranchName is set (branch exists on remote), headBranchName is used as base_ref. Only unpushed branches fall back.
2. Auth cancellation gate only applied to the chat-participant entry point. copilotCLIChatSessions.ts and copilotCLIChatSessionsContribution.ts call delegate() directly; they would have surfaced a generic "invalid response" error on cancellation. The permissive-auth check now lives inside delegate() itself so every caller benefits.
3. Uncommitted-changes warning was incomplete. CLI paths only checked indexChanges (staged); the main path warned on neither. delegate() and both CLI handlers now check both workingTree and indexChanges.
4. Base-branch fallback was silent. Users had no way to know their work would run from default_branch instead of the current branch. A stream.progress notice now fires when that fallback happens.

Server-side verification

• sweagentd docs/adr/0001-create-job-api.md: only problem_statement is required; pull_request is [Optional]; v1 POST /jobs returns {job_id, session_id, actor, created_at, updated_at} immediately, without waiting for the PR.
• copilot-mission-control internal/sweagentd/sweagentd.go: MC sends pull_request = {title, base_ref, head_ref} only — no body_placeholder, no body_suffix, no history/summary injection in problem_statement. This is our target behavior.

Non-PR (no PR at all) workflow is on the sweagentd roadmap ("Supporting non-PR based workflow is on our radar but didn't get a chance to look into this yet"). This PR is forward-compatible: once the server supports it, we can drop pull_request entirely from the payload.

Tests

• npx vitest run src/extension/chatSessions/vscode-node/test/ — 474 passed, 3 skipped, 14 test files.
• npx tsc -p tsconfig.json --noEmit — clean.
• npx eslint on the changed files — clean.

Existing spec (copilotCloudSessionsProvider.spec.ts) covers helpers + ChatSessionContentBuilder; dedicated coverage for the new delegate() paths (auth cancellation, upstream-branch detection, uncommitted-changes warning) is flagged as a follow-up rather than being bundled here.

Follow-ups (separate PRs)

• Tasks API migration. Migrate from /jobs to Mission Control's public Tasks API (POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/tasks), which defaults create_pull_request: false for public callers — aligning us with the non-PR workflow once @vscode/copilot-api exposes a client. OpenAPI confirms the default in api/generated-sessions-openapi.yaml.
• W3b (server-dependent): true PR decoupling via a session-by-id URI scheme and a SessionIdForJob resource type, so nothing in the provider assumes a PR ever exists. Waits on sweagentd.
• Consider dropping the 30s waitForJobWithPullRequest wait in delegate() in a follow-up once we're happy to return a streamed/placeholder ChatResponsePullRequestPart.
• Add dedicated tests for the new delegate() paths (auth cancellation, upstream branch detection, uncommitted-changes warning).

Risk

Low. All touched code was reachable only from the modal path we're removing, from the summary path we're removing, or from the rich-PR-payload path that MC already proves is unnecessary. The authenticated (permissiveGitHubSession) pre-check keeps the same auth requirement — just without the modal wrapper.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Aligns the VS Code Copilot Cloud Agent delegation flow with Mission Control’s PR-decoupling behavior by removing pre-delegation UI/preflight work and sending a minimal job payload (raw user prompt + resolved references, minimal pull_request block).

Changes:

• Removes the delegate/commit/push confirmation modal and associated git preflight / workspace-state tracking.
• Stops summarizing chat history for problem_statement; sends the raw prompt with resolved references only.
• Simplifies the pull_request payload to title, base_ref, and optional head_ref, and deletes now-unreachable git operations code.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
src/extension/chatSessions/vscode/copilotCodingAgentUtils.ts	Removes PR body placeholder/suffix helpers now that cloud sessions no longer send those fields.
src/extension/chatSessions/vscode-node/copilotCloudSessionsProvider.ts	Removes confirmation + git preflight flow; delegates directly, removes history summarization, and trims pull_request payload fields.
src/extension/chatSessions/vscode-node/copilotCloudGitOperationsManager.ts	Deletes unreachable git operations helper previously used by the modal/preflight path.

Copilot's findings

• Files reviewed: 3/3 changed files
• Comments generated: 1

[Copilot]

The new permissive-auth path treats any error from getGitHubSession('permissive', { createIfNone: … }) as an authorization failure. getGitHubSession can throw a cancellation error when the user dismisses the sign-in prompt, so this will surface as an error instead of cleanly cancelling the request. Consider handling isCancellationError(error) (and returning {} / streaming a cancellation message) separately, and log via logService.error(error, 'Authorization failed') rather than interpolating the error into the message (per ILogService.error guidance).

[Oregand]

Good catch, both addressed in aecc4a7:

• Cancellation is now re-thrown as a CancellationError when isCancellationError(error) (or token.isCancellationRequested) so a dismissed sign-in prompt cancels cleanly instead of surfacing as an auth failure.
• Switched to logService.error(error, 'Authorization failed') per the ILogService.error(error: string | Error, message?: string) signature.

[Oregand]

Next logical PR: migrate to Mission Control's public Tasks API

Today (both before and after this PR): VS Code calls sweagentd via /jobs through @vscode/copilot-api's RemoteAgentJobPayload, which requires pull_request semantics and always produces a PR.

What MC ships today: POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/tasks (see api/generated-sessions-openapi.yaml and internal/session/handler_task.go):

create_pull_request:
  type: boolean
  default: false    # ← public callers get no-PR by default

// handler_task.go
// CreatePullRequest precedence:
// - Use the explicit request value when provided.
// - Otherwise default to false for public API requests.
// - Otherwise default to true for internal requests.

Session identity is a task_id (no PR required). Peer endpoints already exist: GET /tasks/{id}/events, POST /tasks/{id}/steer, POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/tasks/{id}/archive, POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/tasks/{id}/sessions, and create-pull-request-for-task for when the user explicitly asks for a PR later.

Proposed follow-up (stacked on this PR)

1. Add a Tasks API client to @vscode/copilot-api. It currently only exposes RemoteAgentJobPayload — we need CreateTaskRequest / TaskResponse / events types.
2. Swap session identity from PR number → task_id. Introduce SessionIdForTask; migrate SessionIdForPr usages in copilotCloudSessionsProvider.ts; provideChatSessionItems lists tasks instead of PRs.
3. Replace waitForJobWithPullRequest with GET /tasks/{id}/events streaming.
4. Gate PR-requiring UI (openPullRequestReroute, checkoutPullRequestReroute) on "task has a PR" and add a "Create PR" action that posts to /tasks/{id}/create-pull-request.
5. Default create_pull_request: false on create — matches Codex and Claude behavior that Luke's Slack thread called out.
6. Telemetry api: "tasks" | "jobs" during rollout, feature-flag the client-side switch for canarying.

That PR is the one that delivers full PR-decoupling end-to-end — this PR is the minimum viable step to stop the modal/preflight/summary work that's misaligned with Mission Control's contract today.

[Oregand]

@microsoft-github-policy-service agree company="GitHub"

[Oregand]

Did an independent critique pass after the initial round and it caught four real regressions that the first commit introduced. Pushed 86924b118 addressing all of them:

1. Current remote-tracking branch was being ignored. The old preflight path used the user's checked-out branch as base_ref when it existed on remote. The minimal-alignment commit always fell back to default_branch, which hit pushed feature branches too — broader than just the unpushed-WIP case. delegate() now inspects RepoContext.upstreamBranchName: if the branch is tracked upstream, use headBranchName as base_ref; if it's unpushed, fall back to default_branch and emit a stream.progress notice so the user knows which branch the agent will start from.

2. Auth cancellation was only normalized in chatParticipantImpl. The Copilot CLI /delegate handlers in copilotCLIChatSessions.ts:1469 and copilotCLIChatSessionsContribution.ts:1748 call cloudSessionProvider.delegate(...) directly, so they bypassed the pre-auth block I added. When the permissive session was missing there, users got a generic "invalid response" error from deep inside postCopilotAgentJob. Moved the permissive-session acquisition + CancellationError normalization into delegate() itself so all callers benefit.

3. Uncommitted-changes warning. Main path warned on neither; the CLI paths only checked indexChanges (staged). delegate() now warns uniformly on both staged and unstaged changes. Also fixed the pre-existing CLI checks in copilotCLIChatSessions.ts:1463 and copilotCLIChatSessionsContribution.ts:1742 to include workingTree.

4. Silent base-branch fallback. When we fall back to default_branch, we now emit "Current branch 'foo' is not on the remote; cloud agent will start from 'main'" so the user isn't surprised.

Judgment calls I deliberately didn't revert:

• Chat-history summarization stays removed. Luke's Slack note that the agent is "inventing its own prompt different from what I asked it" is consistent with the local history summary overriding the user's actual intent. Codex, Claude, and Mission Control don't do client-side history summarization. If we find the agent loses useful context in practice, the right fix is server-side summarization in Mission Control (the Tasks API migration), not resurrecting the local summary.
• copilotcloud.chat.confirmationCancelled telemetry is gone with the modal. The event had no meaning without the modal.
• New tests for the changed paths — the rubber-duck noted the existing spec doesn't exercise delegation/auth/base-ref behavior. Agree, but adding that coverage is scope creep for this PR; happy to add in a follow-up.

474 tests still pass, tsc + eslint clean.

[alexdima]

Thanks for the contribution! This repository has been archived because the project has moved into the main VS Code repository.

Could you please reopen/recreate this PR against:
https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/tree/main/extensions/copilot

We’ll continue reviewing contributions there. Thanks!