Key Challenges Encountered in Agent Mode and Recommendations for Improvement

In Agent mode, the following issues significantly impact usability and workflow efficiency:

- Repeated authorization prompts are required to read or edit files, sometimes dozens of times per session.
- Symlinks must be manually created in the project root to allow Copilot access to shared Swift packages located outside the root directory, further compounded by the repeated permission requests.
- Copilot occasionally becomes inconsistent in determining which files to access or modify, leading to data loss, file corruption, duplicated content, and excessive read/edit requests. This behavior feels inefficient and counterproductive for a development workflow.

It would be immensely valuable if Copilot offered a command-line interface for agentic operations (similar to tools like Claude Code or Warp) allowing developers to manage everything directly from the terminal. Unfortunately, those tools aren’t currently permitted in our environment because we only are allowed to use company CoPilot based solutions, which is a shame, as they provide a far smoother experience compared to IDE-based plugins.