Update on "Co-authored-by: Copilot" in commit messages

What happened?

In 1.110, we added a setting to add Copilot as coauthor in commit messages by appending Co-authored-by: Copilot copilot@github.com. The setting git.addAICoAuthor has three different values:

off - no attribution no matter whether Copilot assisted or not with the code in this commit
chatAndAgent - add attribution if the commit contains code that was generated using the chat feature
all - add attribution if the commit contains any kind of AI-generated code (chat, inline completions, NES)

The default value of the setting was off.

In 1.117 (public rollout started 4/22), we changed the setting default to all. There was a bug in the code that was not found in testing that attributed non-Copilot code completions to Copilot. This resulted in commit messages containing Co-authored-by: Copilot copilot@github.com even when the disableAIfeatures setting was turned on. This issue is tracked in #313064.

Because of the bug, we changed the setting value to chatAndAgent in 1.118 (public rollout started 4/29).

You can disable the functionality by explicitly turning the feature off in user settings:
"git.addAICoAuthor": "off".

What is happening now?

We reverted the default for the AI attribution feature back to off. We also ensure that the feature is disabled when disableAIFeatures is set to true no matter the value of git.addAICoAuthor. This was done in Change default for git.addAICoAuthor to off #313931. These fixes will be tested and released in 1.119 (public rollout starting 5/6).
We are reviewing our test and release processes for gaps to ensure we prevent similar issues in the future.

What will happen to the feature?

Thank you for all your feedback. We'll make/retain the following changes:

The attribution is never applied for changes that are not AI-related.
Before adding a commit trailer, the user will have to give consent, no matter the default value of the setting.
We'll review the attribution message. A better approach might be using the approach of "assisted-by" attribution as described in Add Assisted-by instead of Co-authored-by for AI agents #313962.
The same approach would allow us to add model information as tracked in Agent co author | add specific model information to commit #297353.

We will work on these improvements and iterate with the community via issues and discussions on GitHub to make sure the bugs are fixed and concerns are addressed.

Do your process improvements include more thorough vetting of vibe coded contributions from non-technical contributors?

In the first place, why are you treating Copilot as special without adding UI for adding human co-authors?

In the first place, why are you treating Copilot as special without adding UI for adding human co-authors?

Good point. As we add UI for it, I think it makes sense that the user should be able to enter whatever they want.

You mentioned this in #309947 but I don't see any reason why setting the coauthored by would completely remove the "disable ai" setting

You mentioned this in #309947 but I don't see any reason why setting the coauthored by would completely remove the "disable ai" setting

Ugh, sorry, you're right - that's unrelated. It's been a long day... thanks a lot for noticing it!
Edit: 309947 looks bad though, so I'd like to take a look if I can get to it...

Automatically enabling this was bad. Then claiming it was to “fix a bug” is utterly ridiculous and quite frankly, insulting.

We’ve seen Microsoft shoehorning Copilot into literally everything it can, so when automatically adding “Co-authored by Copilot” to commits from inside a Microsoft code editor is claimed to be an “accident”, you can understand how people just aren’t going to believe that. At all.

Tobias Berger (@Toby222)

You mentioned this in #309947 but I don't see any reason why setting the coauthored by would completely remove the "disable ai" setting

Ugh, sorry, you're right - that's unrelated. It's been a long day... thanks a lot for noticing it! Edit: 309947 looks bad though, so I'd like to take a look if I can get to it...

Tobias Berger (@Toby222) FWIW: #314340 I need to run it through lots of tests, that will take some time...

Are you going to keep considering minor contributions like NES and commit message generation as Copilot co-authored? Shouldn’t they have been handled differently than code suggestions and chat, where both of those would have had a much higher acceptance rate from the developer community?

I think your initial mistake was not of a technical nature but including these minor contributions in the default "all" setting too. This could have been nothing other than a deliberate attempt to maximize Copilot attribution solely for marketing purposes.

Are you going to keep considering minor contributions like NES and commit message generation as Copilot co-authored? Shouldn't they have been handled differently than code suggestions and chat, where both of those would have had a much higher acceptance rate from the developer community?

I think your initial mistake was not of technical nature but including these minor contributions in the default "all" setting too. This could have not been anything else other than a deliberate attempt to maximize Copilot attribution solely for marketing purposes.

The answer to that question is the setting is there to make it a user choice what to attribute. Per above plan the feature needs a lot of work to give user control over what, how and when is attributed, if attributed at all.

Devs are already on high alert thanks to npm attacks, can't blame them for reacting this way when vscode injects copilot to commits. I hope this remains opt in even after the feature is refined.

Devs are already on high alert thanks to npm attacks, can't blame them for reacting this way when vscode injects copilot to commits. I hope this remains opt in even after the feature is refined.

Yep, that's the plan.

Are you going to keep considering minor contributions like NES and commit message generation as Copilot co-authored? Shouldn't they have been handled differently than code suggestions and chat, where both of those would have had a much higher acceptance rate from the developer community?

I think your initial mistake was not of technical nature but including these minor contributions in the default "all" setting too. This could have not been anything else other than a deliberate attempt to maximize Copilot attribution solely for marketing purposes.

The answer to that question is the setting is there to make it a user choice what to attribute. Per above plan the feature needs a lot of work to give user control over what, how and when is attributed, if attributed at all.

This still doesn’t explain why the default was changed to the most aggressive attribution setting, which appears to be the actual issue. It should have been foreseeable that it would generate some backslash when even a single NES word change is treated the same as an entirely AI-generated commit.

Max (@maxdzin)

Max (@maxdzin)

So, what actually needed is the ability to properly track traces of code, generated by LLMs in git commits, so that it is easy to distinguish which lines were written by humans, which by LLMs, and which may be a combination of both.

Definitely agree. I mentioned this in an earlier comment. This is called code provenance and it's something that a bunch of companies are interested in, not just to track adoption rates but also for other reasons - compliance, licensing issues, etc.

There's two common approaches: one is to hook into AI agents to track their writes (e.g. PostToolUse hook for Edit and Write tools), and the other is to have a separate sidecar process that watches for edits (e.g. using inotify) from AI agent processes.

Unacceptable! Copilot added Co-Author information without my permission or even notified me.

This is a malicious practice, when the commit message contains "Co-authored-by" and is pushed to GitHub, the contributors on GitHub will continue to show Copilot, even if you later clean up all commit messages and force-push to GitHub.

Dmitriy Vasyura (@dmitrivMS)

Dmitriy Vasyura (@dmitrivMS)

This is still an issue!

Here you can see my version of VSCode:

Here you can see I have it set to be off:

Then I asked AI to commit and push my code as you can see here:

This was done in the new Agents App btw.

And as you can see it clearly added "Copilot" as a co-author:

Please fix your stuff !!!

krtdm (@KerteszDomokos)

Any actually great VSCode alternatives? We should start looking, microslop windows team started working on devtools sadly

krtdm (@KerteszDomokos) If your language has a jetbrains ide. At least with python, pycharm is fully stable when debugging and doesn't get stuck in lambdas and a bunch of other places, unlike vscode extensions for python.

@dmitrivMS

This is still an issue!

Yes, this is still an issue with GitHub Copilot CLI and Claude CLI - if you use those agents, they add things on their own. The setting controls VS Code agents attribution. That said, I think we need a comprehensive solution for this - i.e. for the setting to control not just VS Code agents, but things we integrate with as well. There is a PR to mitigate this at PR time, but it won't help in this scenario since the agent pushed directly, so those changes already picked up the trailers... Need to research this more.

Dmitriy Vasyura (@dmitrivMS)

Dmitriy Vasyura (@dmitrivMS) Hi! This issue is back in Copilot Chat as well, the feature is disabled (user and workspace). I haven't used AI to commit, not even the message, so this is even more infuriating.

This is what I got in my two previous commits:

Edit:

Version: 1.123.0
Commit: 6a44c352bd24569c417e530095901b649960f9f8
Date: 2026-06-03T11:29:03+02:00
Electron: 42.2.0
ElectronBuildId: 14159160
Chromium: 148.0.7778.97
Node.js: 24.15.0
V8: 14.8.178.14-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.4.0

Edit 2: By looking at my previous commits, I realize the "Co-authored-by: Copilot" is added randomly to some older commits as well (2 weeks ago).

Cloos (@Clooos)

Cloos (@Clooos) What does it say when you hove rover "Copilot (Co-author)"?

Sorry for the late answer (I was in vacation), I've updated to the latest VS Code release (1.124.2) and it came back again randomly.

Here is what I have when I hover "Copilot (Co-author)":

I even added "git.addAICoAuthor": false, to my ~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/settings.json manually, no change.

Edit: I just realized that the correct syntax is "git.addAICoAuthor": "off", I will try with this instead but this is a bit counter intuitive since all other options are using true or false.

fix: match AI co-author trailers by identity, not broad company domain (

So when are they going to fix this properly.
Specifically, NEVER changing the commit message after I have confirmed it.

I would allow, perhaps even expect the attribution to be added to the commit message as the bot makes changes.
The important point isn't the existence of the authorship/assistance claim it's the complete dishonesty of sneaking it in after I click "commit".

rdebath

rdebath You can use VSCodium, which is VSCode without Microsoft telemetry and other nonsense. The maintainer has specifically disabled this IP violation.

Nicolas Lebacq (@SmashingQuasar)

Nicolas Lebacq (@SmashingQuasar) No, that's not possible for us, the primary reason for using VSCode is Microsoft language extensions that they refuse to allow in VSCodium

NB: Copilot can still be disabled in VSCode despite it's arrogant installation method.

rdebath

rdebath you can force download extensions from the marketplace and install them manually in VSCodium. Look around the internet there are several ways to do so.

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Update on "Co-authored-by: Copilot" in commit messages #314311

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Update on "Co-authored-by: Copilot" in commit messages #314311

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subourbonite commented on May 5, 2026

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Daniel15 commented on May 13, 2026

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ShaunRoselt commented on May 16, 2026

This is still an issue!

Please fix your stuff !!!

SpicyCatGames commented on May 16, 2026

dmitrivMS commented on May 16, 2026

This is still an issue!

Clooos commented on Jun 7, 2026

dmitrivMS commented on Jun 8, 2026

Clooos commented on Jun 15, 2026

rdebath commented on Sep 12, 2026

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