Feature Request: COPILOT_AGENTS_DIR env var (or --agents-dir flag) for Copilot CLI

[ShawnMSkyline]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Copilot in GitHub

Body

Problem

When using both the Copilot CLI and VS Code with organization-managed agents, there is currently no way to satisfy all three of these requirements simultaneously:

Org-sync enabled in VS Code (github.copilot.chat.organizationCustomAgents.enabled: true)
No duplicate agents shown in VS Code
CLI has visibility of all org-managed agents
The CLI hardcodes $COPILOT_HOME/agents/ as its only agent source. VS Code independently scans both ~/.copilot/agents/ and its own org-sync cache. Any agent present in both locations appears twice in the VS Code agent picker.

Requested Solution

Add a COPILOT_AGENTS_DIR environment variable (and/or a --agents-dir CLI flag) that allows the CLI to read agents from an arbitrary directory — such as the VS Code org-sync cache:

COPILOT_AGENTS_DIR=%AppData%\Code\User\globalStorage\github.copilot-chat\github\<org>\agents

This would allow users to point the CLI at the same directory VS Code's org-sync populates, eliminating the duplicate and keeping a single source of truth.

Alternatively, VS Code could deduplicate agents by name: field in the frontmatter rather than by file path, which would also resolve the issue without any CLI changes.

Environment

OS: Windows
VS Code with GitHub Copilot extension
Copilot CLI via gh copilot> COPILOT_AGENTS_DIR=%AppData%\Code\User\globalStorage\github.copilot-chat\github\agents

This would allow users to point the CLI at the same directory VS Code's org-sync populates, eliminating the duplicate and keeping a single source of truth.

Alternatively, VS Code could deduplicate agents by name: field in the frontmatter rather than by file path, which would also resolve the issue without any CLI changes.

Environment

• OS: Windows
• VS Code with GitHub Copilot extension
• Copilot CLI via gh copilot

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