GitHub Copilot continually restarts extension host; chat prompt does not produce anything, and deletes chat debug history

[garretwilson]

All day today I've repeatedly seen an occurrence in which I will submit a prompt, and nothing happens. I see some sort of flashes in the tabs and the editor, but nothing seems to have been edited. The little "Retry", "Restore", "Unhelpful" icons appear, but nothing else.

There are no no error messages. In addition the debug chat view is almost empty (even though this conversation has been going on for weeks). It only contains two modelList entries. It looks like all my "debug chat" information from over the weeks have disappeared.

Normally hitting retry results in the prompt working the second time.

[garretwilson]

This just happened again. It says "Working" for a bit, then I see flashes around the screen; for example, the badge on the Git icon (showing the number of pending changes) may have disappeared, because it caught my eye when it came back. Then nothing; the icons show up as if it did something. The debug chat view is empty again except for two modelList entries.

[garretwilson]

This happened again. I knew it was happening because the badge disappeared from the Git icon again and that tabs flashed. I'll keep a watch out to see specifically what flashes about the tabs. (This sure wastes credits though.)

[garretwilson]

It did it again. The scrollbar under the tabs disappears and then comes back. The chat debug only has a single modelList now.

This time it was for a completely different model from a different provider, using a different agent.

[garretwilson]

I left the debug chat view open this time. Whenever this happens, the "Working …" message appears for a very long time. Then suddenly the entire debug chat view will just go empty, and the following message appears in the debug chat panel:

There is no data provider registered that can … this view.

Something like that. Before I could copy it, the view started filling up again with two modelList entries, just as before.

It would appear that something is causing some sort of internal crash and GitHub Copilot is just discarding the chat debug info.

[garretwilson]

In addition, I'm frequently seeing "Working …" for a very long time after I submit a prompt before any further action takes place. Sometimes it eventually continues. Sometimes it dumps the debug chat history and then stops (this ticket) with no further message.

[garretwilson]

Ah, this time I saw something about "The extension host terminated unexpectedly. Restarting …" at the bottom, left-hand corner in the status bar. This seems to be related.

[garretwilson]

In addition, I'm frequently seeing "Working …" for a very long time after I submit a prompt before any further action takes place. Sometimes it eventually continues. Sometimes it dumps the debug chat history and then stops (this ticket) with no further message.

It turns out those two conditions are not always present.

Just now I was not editing a previous prompt, and it did not show "Working ..." for a long time. It just immediately terminated the extension host and then did nothing.