microsoft
Add option to chat without workspace context
Having a back-and-forth with Copilot is very frustrating due to the lengthly process to collect workspace information (exacerbated by VSCode forcing the "@workspace" context, and the trigger-happiness of the algorithm that determines what to collect). This creates a ~5 second delay before each response that slows down conversation unnecessarily when asking general questions not related to your codebase.
On top of that, it makes Copilot dumber as it unnecessarily prioritises the data it gets from the workspace context over the current chat context. As an example, I was asking Copilot to write a comparator function for sorting arrays in JavaScript. When it responded with a function that only sorted numbers, I asked it to rewrite the function to cover all data types. Rather than pay attention to our chat context, it assumed I must be talking about a random function in a file I had open and started trying to rewrite it. After I restated the prompt about creating a new sorting function, it just parroted back the sorting function in our codebase that I was trying to compare against a Copilot generated implementation.
It should not be including workspace everytime. Can you include a screen recording. https://gifcap.dev/ is a tool I use to capture screen recordings
Here's me opening a brand new VSCode window, and typing a message without any context. As you can see, the second the message is sent, it gains the @workspace context, and Copilot attempts to scan my workspace. https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-copilot-release/assets/39972488/95d1d023-7739-4358-a6d9-115fbbe79c1d
Hi @EwenDC, sorry this got buried a bit in my inbox. On the latest version are you still experiencing this problem?
Hi @lramos15, apologies for the slow response.
Yes, this is still occurring for me. https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3fe9256b-a5af-4a6b-979d-13d6a8087081
Are you up to date? I see a pending extension update and VS Code update in that recording
Sorry missed your response again 😔. Updated and same result
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4b849c91-b164-473f-bfd4-c904782fee4f
Is it possible that you are pressing cmd+enter to submit the chat? That does send it to @workspace. enter should not do that.
If you're just pressing enter, you can check the keybindings editor to see whether you ended up with a different keybinding for the command workbench.action.chat.submitSecondaryAgent.
You could also run the command "Toggle Keyboard Shortcuts Troubleshooting" and check the Window log to see which command it actually picked up to run
Oh my god I am so dumb 🤦♂️. Yeah I was doing ctrl + enter. I blame slack for giving me the muscle memory. Thanks for sticking with me and sorry for wasting your time.
No worries, you can also customize the keybindings if you'd like to keep the familiar muscle memory