title: "Cloud Agent" description: "Copilot cloud agent: background work on GitHub that returns pull requests" section: "Copilot" readTime: "5 min" badge: "NEW"

Copilot Cloud Agent

The cloud agent (formerly the "Copilot coding agent") researches a repository, plans changes, and implements them in the background. It works in an ephemeral cloud development environment rather than your local IDE, edits files, runs tests and linters, handles branch creation, commit messages, and pushing, and can open a pull request.

When to Use the Cloud Agent

Use case	Why cloud agent
Create a PR from a GitHub issue	Native GitHub integration, no local setup needed
Run agent tasks while your laptop is closed	Runs on GitHub servers
Recurring or event-driven chores	Automations run on a schedule or on repository events
Fix code scanning alerts	Alerts can be assigned to Copilot in a security campaign

For interactive, iterative work use the local agent instead.

Start a Task

You can start work from:

The agents panel on GitHub.com, or a conversation
An issue or pull request on GitHub.com. On an issue, open the Assignees panel and select Copilot
VS Code — choose the Cloud session type and a repository in chat, or use the Delegate to coding agent code action on a TODO comment (requires the GitHub Pull Requests extension)
Automations — created from a repository's Agents tab, available in eligible private and internal repositories

The PR links back to the issue and summarizes what was done. You can change the model Copilot uses, but what you can select depends on how you start the task, your plan, and policies.

Configure the Environment

The agent's development environment is configured in .github/workflows/copilot-setup-steps.yml. Use it to install dependencies and tools before the agent starts. It supports a timeout-minutes setting if you want shorter sessions.

Repository custom instructions apply too: .github/copilot-instructions.md, path-specific .github/instructions/*.instructions.md files with applyTo, and AGENTS.md. Add excludeAgent: "cloud-agent" to an instruction file's frontmatter to keep the cloud agent from using it.

Limitations

Work is limited to the repository where the task starts, on one branch, with one pull request per task
By default, the GitHub MCP server only accesses context in the working repository; broader access needs MCP configuration
Sessions have a hard limit of 59 minutes, so split complex tasks
Repository rules that are incompatible with Copilot can block access (a ruleset can grant Copilot a bypass)
Only repositories hosted on GitHub are supported
Availability depends on your plan, organization policies, and whether the repository owner has disabled the cloud agent

Some premium models cost more AI credits. See billing and usage for allowances.

Agents — All agent types including local and Copilot CLI
Copilot App — Desktop app for agent sessions
Customization — Custom agents and instructions