GitHub Copilot silently inserts itself as a co-author after I manually replaced the generated commit message

[yangyijie912]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Product Feedback

💬 Feature/Topic Area

VS Code

Body

I want to report a serious issue with GitHub Copilot’s commit message generation workflow.

GitHub Copilot inserted the following line into my Git commit message:

Co-authored-by: Copilot copilot@github.com

The most concerning part is that I had already checked the commit message before committing. I deleted Copilot’s generated English commit message and manually wrote my own commit message instead. However, after the commit was created, the final Git history still contained the Copilot co-author line.

This means the message I reviewed before committing was not the final content that ended up in Git history, or Copilot/VS Code added co-author metadata after my manual edit. That is unacceptable in a professional development workflow.

Commit metadata is part of the project’s accountability, review, deployment, and audit trail. Copilot only generated a commit message suggestion; it did not author the code. It should never silently add itself as a co-author, especially after the user manually replaces the generated message.

This behavior is also inconsistent. It does not happen on every commit, which makes it behave like a random hidden trap. I only discovered it when checking recent Git commit history before deploying to a test environment.

Please treat this as a product safety and trust issue, not a cosmetic issue.

Requested changes:

Make AI co-author attribution strictly opt-in.

Never add Co-authored-by metadata unless the user explicitly confirms it.

Provide a setting to permanently disable Copilot co-author attribution in commit messages.

Ensure the commit message shown to the user before committing exactly matches the final message written to Git history.

Clearly document when and why Copilot may add commit trailers or metadata.

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[mene6]

Remove, no one asked for this bug

[aeltorio]

@yangyijie912 patch the SDK (here is my patch (with perl) for 0.45.1)

#!/bin/bash
set -eu

if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 path/to/@github/copilot/sdk/index.js"
  exit 1
fi

file="$1"

perl -pi -e '
  s/if\(!vr\(e,lXe\)\{/if(!vr(e,lXe) && e.includeCoAuthoredBy!==false){/;
  s/if\(!n&&r.cwd&&vr\(e,lXe\)\)\{/if(!n&&r.cwd&&vr(e,lXe) && e.includeCoAuthoredBy!==false){/;
' "$file"

echo "Patched $file"

patch-copilot-sdk.sh

[dere36100]

@aeltorio how can I patch it with Macos ?

[aeltorio]

just paste in a terminal:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/user-attachments/files/27124688/patch-copilot-sdk.sh -o /tmp/patch-copilot-sdk.sh
bash /tmp/patch-copilot-sdk.sh

[evoactivity]

I've also been seeing this, it's rather annoying.

[weblate-highcanfly]

@aeltorio You're a genius 👍 🥇

[muhammad4dev]

Go to settings and turn off the "Git: Add AI Co Author" setting.

Or add this to your settings.json file:

"git.addAICoAuthor": "off"

[NovemLinguae]

Go to settings and turn off the "Git: Add AI Co Author" setting.

This worked. Thanks. P.S. This setting is in VS Code, not github.com.

[psimsa]

Why the heck would anyone who's still not fully done fighting past reputation crisis add this as a default setting, even for inline completions?

[vcprocles]

And this is after they replaced old intellisense with this.

[drawcode]

I literally cannot believe they did this. Even when you just have it write a comment or commit message it adds it. Absolutely mindblowing to just enable that by default.

[lethargosapatheia]

The actual question is: why are you using copilot (and github) in the first place? All the past Microsoft-related catastrophes just haven't been enough, I guess.

[AAltemus]

This 100% needs to be opt-in. Especially if you're going to replace intellisense and consider that a co-author.

[ndamulelonemakh]

Apart from marketing GitHub Copilot, what is the upside of this, for the developer that is?

[marcoieni]

I found this in the settings:

[hamadhk7]

Yeah this is actually a known behavior in VS Code, and it’s not coming from Git itself but from the Copilot integration.
Git does not add co authors automatically. That line is being injected by VS Code when Copilot is involved in commit message generation.
You can disable it with this setting:
In VS Code settings search for
Git Add AI Co Author
and turn it off
or directly in settings.json:

“git.addAICoAuthor”: false

After disabling that, Copilot should stop adding the co authored by line entirely.
Also what you described about the message changing after review is likely because VS Code modifies the commit message at commit time, not exactly what is shown in the input box. So your concern about trust and audit trail is actually valid.
This should definitely be opt in, not enabled by default.

[gk-volane]

This is not right. Seems like they are operating in bad faith here, this should have been toggled off by default.

[gk-volane]

I also saw from a newsletter that Copilot is doing away with annual subscriptions and customers with existing annual subscriptions will have no new models or features.

[vcprocles]

Or, at least have it on other option, and add coauthor if there are chat or agent edits. Having this added to ALL commits is crazy

…

-------- Original Message --------

On Wednesday, 04/29/26 at 12:30 gk-volane ***@***.***> wrote: This is not right. Seems like they are operating in bad faith here, this should have been toggled off by default. — Reply to this email directly, [view it on GitHub](#194075 (comment)), or [unsubscribe](https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AUGCDIEBIGK56E5KPEJMVLT4YHDU3AVCNFSM6AAAAACYHMJXNKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTMNZVGM4DQNA). You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[jmjoy]

Linus would absolutely tear this 'git.addAICoAuthor' feature a new one.

The Linux community explicitly forbids using 'Co-authored-by' for AI tools or models; they insist on using 'Assisted-by' instead.

[mene6]

if anything its just a cheap way to insert your name into commit messages, probably idea from microslop

[sanderrr]

I now expect a practical tool for editing the commit text from VS

[epiqu1n]

I don't even use Copilot beyond inline suggestions and it's still started randomly self-inserting as a co-author into my commits...

[Ejdyz]

The copilot is adding himself as co-author, but i cannot even find the setting to turn it off in the vs-code itself. I tried to paste the "git.addAICoAuthor": "off" into the settings.json, so i am courious if it will work....

But yea, i dont think I agreed to something like this somewhere and its really annoying...

[herman-yulau]

Copilot is completely disabled, but still VSCode adds this coauthor tag to every my commit. It's definitely a dirty bug!

[kfern]

It's not a bug. It's trash

[psanderson-da]

I'm not a copyright lawyer but would assume that this could end up in a potential legal nightmare as well.

[arkangel-dev]

I didn't even use Copilot for this particular commit, why is inserting itself into the message?

[mapau]

The setting should allow the following:
on/off default off
trailer value: Assisted-by: AGENT_NAME:MODEL_VERSION

[mene6]

if anything: the user is assisting the ai to make it code the way the user wants. Better to put "Assisted by the community" on all pages on all ai product sites.

[tln]

WTF. This line is being added silently to commit messages. This is absolutely unacceptable.

Request: Show anything to be added in the Commit message box. What I see in that box needs to be the commit message!

This is being added for co-pilot completions. Which are supercharged intellisense type completions. No prompts or chat involved. I would not consider this "co-authoring" at all! Making this add the co-author by default is NOT what I would want, and probably not what ANYBODY would want. Kind of a crazy choice.

Suggestion: change default to "chatAndAgent"

Or, ask user "Your commit used co-pilot -- give credit? (Always/yes/no)"

Given the backlash I think you (VS Code) should make the default "off" in the next update TBH.