Delegating tasks to Copilot

Use autopilot mode, or the /delegate slash command, to get Copilot to work autonomously on your behalf.

Who can use this feature?

GitHub Copilot CLI is available with all Copilot plans. If you receive Copilot from an organization, the Copilot CLI policy must be enabled in the organization's settings.

In this article

Copilot CLI offers two ways to have Copilot work autonomously: autopilot mode and the /delegate command. Both let you hand off tasks, but they differ in where the work happens:

  • Autopilot mode runs locally in your CLI session. You give autopilot full permissions and Copilot then works on a task without stopping to prompt you for input. Your local machine does the work, and you can watch progress in real time. Use autopilot when you want hands-free local execution.

  • /delegate pushes the task to Copilot cloud agent on GitHub. The work runs remotely: Copilot creates a branch, opens a draft pull request, and works in the background. Use /delegate when you want to hand off a task entirely and continue running even if you shut down your local machine.

Get autopilot to complete tasks autonomously on your local machine

There are two ways to use autopilot mode:

  • Interactively: In an interactive session, press Shift+Tab until you see "autopilot" in the status bar. If prompted to choose permissions for autopilot mode, allow full permissions, then enter your prompt.
  • Programmatically: Pass the CLI a prompt directly in a command, and include the --autopilot option. For example, to use autopilot mode with full permissions, restricting it to 10 continuations, enter copilot --autopilot --yolo --max-autopilot-continues 10 -p "YOUR PROMPT HERE".

For more information, see Allowing GitHub Copilot CLI to work autonomously.

Delegate tasks to Copilot cloud agent

You can delegate a task to Copilot cloud agent on GitHub by using the /delegateslash command, followed by a prompt:

/delegate complete the API integration tests and fix any failing edge cases

Alternatively, prefix a prompt with & to delegate it:

& complete the API integration tests and fix any failing edge cases

Copilot will ask to commit any of your unstaged changes as a checkpoint in a new branch it creates. Copilot cloud agent will open a draft pull request, make changes in the background, and request a review from you.

Copilot will provide a link to the pull request and agent session on GitHub once the session begins.

Next steps

To learn how to invoke specialized agents tailored to specific tasks, such as code review, documentation, or security audits, see Invoking custom agents.