copilot-service

copilot-service provides a stable local CLI and REST wrapper around Copilot/LLM CLI tooling so scripts and agents can call a normalized task API.

What problem this solves

Different LLM CLIs have different prompt formats and output styles. This project gives one stable contract for task-based calls (route-topic, freeform) and isolates provider setup in local config.

Releases

Automated releases are available through GitHub Actions. See docs/release.md for full instructions.

Python client

from copilot_service.client import CopilotServiceClient

client = CopilotServiceClient()  # connects to http://127.0.0.1:8765

result = client.freeform("Explain this error")
if result.ok:
    print(result.content["text"])

result = client.route_topic(
    title="Article title",
    message="Full message",
    article_excerpt="...",
    topics={"asr": "Speech Recognition", "nlp": "NLP"},
)
print(result.content["decision"])

See docs/api-contract.md for the full API contract.

CLI UX

Running copilot-caas with no arguments shows a colorful welcome screen and exits 0:

copilot-caas

Check the installed version:

copilot-caas --version

Run a task:

copilot-caas ask --input examples/route-topic-request.json

Colors are automatically disabled when NO_COLOR is set or output is not a TTY.

Quickstart (fake provider)

python -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

export COPILOT_SERVICE_PROVIDER=fake
export COPILOT_SERVICE_FAKE_RESPONSE='{"decision":"asr","confidence":0.8,"reason":"fake"}'
copilot-service ask --input examples/route-topic-request.json

Systemd user service management

copilot-caas includes a service command group for managing a persistent local systemd user service.

Install

pip install -e .
copilot-caas service install

Or with explicit options:

copilot-caas service install \
  --source-dir /path/to/repo \
  --copilot-bin /path/to/copilot \
  --model gpt-5-mini \
  --host 127.0.0.1 \
  --port 8765

The installer:

• Detects and validates the Copilot CLI binary (with a 20-second timeout per candidate).
• Creates ~/.local/share/copilot-service/ with a dedicated venv.
• Writes ~/.config/copilot-service/env with COPILOT_SERVICE_SHELL_MODE=argv.
• Writes ~/.config/systemd/user/copilot-service.service and enables it.
• Runs a health check and a provider smoke test.

Skip the smoke test (e.g. for CI):

copilot-caas service install --skip-provider-smoke
# or
COPILOT_SERVICE_SKIP_PROVIDER_SMOKE=1 copilot-caas service install

Other service commands

copilot-caas service status    # systemctl status + /health
copilot-caas service restart   # restart + health check
copilot-caas service logs      # journalctl (last 120 lines)
copilot-caas service logs -f   # follow logs
copilot-caas service logs -n 50
copilot-caas service test      # diagnostics + provider smoke test
copilot-caas service uninstall
copilot-caas service uninstall --remove-config --remove-install-dir --yes

Autostart after reboot

The service runs as a systemd user unit — it only starts when you log in. For headless/server setups where no interactive session exists:

sudo loginctl enable-linger "$USER"

Security: The REST server binds to 127.0.0.1 by default. Do not bind to 0.0.0.0 unless you have auth, a reverse proxy, or a firewall in place.

Quickstart (shell provider)

export COPILOT_SERVICE_PROVIDER=shell
export COPILOT_SERVICE_SHELL_COMMAND='python -c "import sys; print(sys.stdin.read())"'
copilot-service ask --task freeform --prompt "Explain this"

REST usage

copilot-service serve --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8765

curl -sS http://127.0.0.1:8765/health
curl -sS http://127.0.0.1:8765/v1/ask \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data @examples/freeform-request.json
curl -sS http://127.0.0.1:8765/v1/tasks/route-topic \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data @examples/route-topic-request.json

Article-ingestion integration example

See examples/article-ingestion-usage.sh for a simple pipeline wrapper around the route-topic task.

Environment

• COPILOT_SERVICE_PROVIDER (shell for MVP, fake for tests)
• COPILOT_SERVICE_SHELL_COMMAND (provider command)
• COPILOT_SERVICE_MODEL (default gpt-5-mini)
• COPILOT_SERVICE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS (default 90)
• COPILOT_SERVICE_HOST (default 127.0.0.1)
• COPILOT_SERVICE_PORT (default 8765)

Limitations

• MVP ships only with shell/fake providers.
• Output quality depends on your configured local command and prompt discipline.
• route-topic fallback behavior can mask model errors when enabled (default true).

Security note

REST binds to 127.0.0.1 by default. The shell command is loaded only from local environment/config (never from request payload).

Debug systemd service

If the service is installed via scripts/install-systemd-user.sh and requests fail, use these commands to diagnose.

Check the env file written by the installer:

cat ~/.config/copilot-service/env

Check service status:

systemctl --user status copilot-service.service --no-pager

Tail recent logs:

journalctl --user -u copilot-service.service -n 120 --no-pager

Show unit configuration (env file path and ExecStart):

systemctl --user show copilot-service.service -p EnvironmentFiles -p ExecStart

Health check:

curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8765/health | jq .

Route-topic API call:

curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8765/v1/tasks/route-topic \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary @/tmp/route-topic-request.json | jq .

Direct provider check (replace /path/to/copilot with the value of COPILOT_SERVICE_SHELL_COMMAND in the env file):

/path/to/copilot \
  -p 'Return only this exact JSON and nothing else: {"ok":true}' \
  --model gpt-5-mini \
  --silent \
  --no-color \
  --no-auto-update \
  --stream off \
  --no-custom-instructions \
  --no-ask-user \
  --available-tools=

Expected output (the leading ● bullet is stripped automatically by the JSON extractor):

● {"ok":true}

Shell provider modes (COPILOT_SERVICE_SHELL_MODE):

Value	Behavior
argv	Prompt passed via -p flag; uses shell=False. Required for GitHub Copilot CLI.
stdin	Prompt piped to subprocess stdin; uses shell=True. Original default.
`` (empty)	Same as stdin — backward-compatible default.

The installer sets COPILOT_SERVICE_SHELL_MODE=argv automatically.