Support copilot agent hooks when installed to local extension space

[jpmorris]

• Copilot Chat Extension Version: 0.37.9

• VS Code Version: 1.109.3

• OS Version: Windows 11 (local) → SSH Remote to Amazon SageMaker (Linux)

• Feature: Agent hooks (settings.json hooks)

• Selected model: Claude Opus 4

• Logs:

2026-03-08 05:39:48.316 [info] [#44] [UserPromptSubmit] Running: {"command":"echo hook-userprompt-fired","cwd":{"$mid":1,"fsPath":"\\home\\sagemaker-user","_sep":1,"external":"vscode-remote://ssh-remote%2Bsagemaker-local/home/sagemaker-user","path":"/home/sagemaker-user","scheme":"vscode-remote","authority":"ssh-remote+sagemaker-local"}}2026-03-08 05:39:48.316 [info] [HookExecutor] Hook command failed to start: echo hook-userprompt-fired: spawn C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe ENOENT

Steps to Reproduce:

I cannot run copilot extension installed to the ssh space because the sagemaker machine I connect to has no internet access, so I need to set it up for local windows extension space.

1. make sure copilot installs to local extensions

    "remote.extensionKind": {
    "github.copilot": ["ui"],
    "github.copilot-chat": ["ui"]
  }

2. Connect VS Code on Windows to a remote Linux host via SSH (Remote - SSH extension)
3. Install the Copilot Chat extension on the local/UI side (not the remote server side) — this is required when the remote host is airgapped with no internet
4. Create ~/.claude/settings.json on the remote host with any hook, e.g.:

{  "hooks": {    "UserPromptSubmit": [      { "type": "command", "command": "echo hello" }    ]  }}

5. Send any message in Copilot Chat

Expected: The hook command executes successfully (either on the remote host or locally with a valid cwd)

Actual: Hook fails with spawn C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe ENOENT. The HookExecutor reads the config from the remote workspace but executes the command locally on Windows using child_process.spawn with shell: true. It passes the remote workspace path (\home\sagemaker-user) as the cwd, which does not exist on the local Windows filesystem. Node.js throws ENOENT when validating the cwd before spawning.

Root cause: The cwd from the remote workspace URI's fsPath (\home\sagemaker-user) is used directly as a local filesystem path. On Windows this resolves to a non-existent UNC-style path, causing the spawn to fail before cmd.exe even launches.

[vs-code-engineering]

Thanks for creating this issue! It looks like you may be using an old version of VS Code; the latest stable release is 1.110.1. Please try upgrading to the latest version and checking whether this issue remains.

Happy Coding!

[jpmorris]

same issue with 1.101.1