sessions: Stop expanding skill/prompt slash commands by joshspicer · Pull Request #314289 · microsoft/vscode

joshspicer · 2026-05-04T23:39:36Z

Skill and prompt slash commands (e.g., '/my-skill args') are now sent verbatim to agents instead of being expanded into verbose markdown references.

This change is safe because Copilot CLI and Claude code natively understand slash commands, so no functionality is lost. Users' prompts are no longer unnecessarily modified.

Changes

Removed the tryExpandPromptSlashCommand() method from slashCommands.ts
Removed expansion logic from the chat input _send() method
Removed the shouldExpandPromptSlashCommand option from chat input configuration
Cleaned up unused imports

Fixes #313376

Skill and prompt slash commands (e.g., '/my-skill args') are now sent verbatim to agents instead of being expanded into verbose markdown references. This change is safe because Copilot CLI and Claude code natively understand slash commands, so no functionality is lost. Users' prompts are no longer unnecessarily modified. Fixes #313376

Copilot

Pull request overview

This PR updates the Agents window (“sessions”) chat input pipeline to preserve user-entered prompt/skill slash commands (for example, /my-skill args) and forward them to the agent verbatim, instead of rewriting them into expanded markdown references.

Changes:

Removed prompt/skill slash-command expansion logic from SlashCommandHandler (including the PromptsType dependency).
Simplified NewChatInputWidget._send() to always send the original query text (after trimming), without conditional expansion.
Removed the now-unused shouldExpandPromptSlashCommand wiring from the new chat view panes (and cleaned up related imports).

Show a summary per file

File	Description
src/vs/sessions/contrib/chat/browser/slashCommands.ts	Removes `tryExpandPromptSlashCommand()` and its `PromptsType` dependency; prompt/skill slash commands remain as completions/decorations only.
src/vs/sessions/contrib/chat/browser/newChatViewPane.ts	Drops `shouldExpandPromptSlashCommand` option plumbing and the unused `ANY_AGENT_HOST_PROVIDER_RE` import.
src/vs/sessions/contrib/chat/browser/newChatInSessionViewPane.ts	Drops `shouldExpandPromptSlashCommand` option plumbing and the unused `ANY_AGENT_HOST_PROVIDER_RE` import.
src/vs/sessions/contrib/chat/browser/newChatInput.ts	Removes expansion logic from `_send()` and removes the related option from the widget configuration shape.