[critical] new GitHub Copilot sessions never appear in list and are irretrievable if Copilot enabled after workspace opened

[garretwilson]

In v1.117, my new session never shows up in the "Sessions" list. If I click on one of the existing sessions, there appears to be no way to get the first session back!

This is critical! I just lost an entire session with a lot of context because I clicked on another session. Now the the original session with all the context is gone!

Version: 1.117.0 (user setup)
Commit: 10c8e557c8b9f9ed0a87f61f1c9a44bde731c409
Date: 2026-04-21T16:12:14-07:00
Electron: 39.8.7
ElectronBuildId: 13841579
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

[garretwilson]

Could this be related to #311898? I'm just grasping at straws here. I don't know how I can emphasize this more. I just lost an entire session.

[garretwilson]

• In my session storage directory C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\workspaceStorage\…\chatSessions, I can see the {uuid}.jsonl file containing the session.
• In C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\workspaceStorage\…\chatEditingSessions, there is a folder matching the {uuid} of that chat session.

Nevertheless the chat session never showed up in the chat sessions list, and I see no way to make it appear so it can be selected again.

[garretwilson]

After restarting VS Code, all my files with in-progress edits (just modified in the disappeared session, waiting for my approval) no longer are marked as pending! It's as if they have all been accepted.

Apparently the new chat sessions was somehow ephemeral, and never got saved. Selecting another session made the new session disappear forever, and even removed the ability to accept/reject pending changes. Not it seems it's as if the session never existed.

@justschen There is a severe bug here somewhere that results in information loss; it should get high priority.

[garretwilson]

I can confirm: in v1.117, my new chat sessions never appear in the list. The only thing I see in the list are a button and two collapsible categories:

• New Session (button)
• "Older"
• "Archived"

Both "Older" and "Archived" can be opened or close, and have sessions within them. My new sessions do not show up anywhere.

[garretwilson]

I found a deeper cause!! Here is what happens: if GitHub Copilot is not enabled upon VS Code startup (but enabled for the workspace after VS Code is already started), then chat sessions never appear in the chat sessions!

If instead I enable GitHub Copilot across the entire system (a security risk), then even the old session I lost reappears!

So there is some sort of race condition: if GitHub Copilot is enabled after the workspace is loaded, the more recent chat sessions never show up.

(This is particularly onerous because of the severe bug #311898 which doesn't persist the per-workspace GitHub Copilot enabling.)