Some Copilot CLI base instructions issued to a subagent prevent it from writing output to a file
- Dominant language
- Shell
- Stars
- 11.2k
- Forks
- 1.9k
- Avg merge
- 14h 16m
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 6
Description
### Describe the bug
- I created a set of agents forming an orchestrator pattern for the full Work Item implementation
- When orchestrator executes a subagent responsible for functional testing this subagent consistently reports that it either could not write a test result file or was **instructed not to write output to a file**
- In either orchestrator or functional tester there are absolutely no instructions to prevent writing output files
- Orchestrator invokes the functional testing subagent only with the Work Item ID (no other `runSubagent` additional instructions)
- In other subagents for phases like Implementation everything works perfectly fine
Sample response from functional testing subagent (**GPT 5.3 Codex**) "...but I could not write the required notes file due the active session constraint: “Do NOT write output to files.”"
Related bug report: #3049
### Affected version
_No response_
### Steps to reproduce the behavior
_No response_
### Expected behavior
_No response_
### Additional context
The same workflow works 100% fine when run via VS Code.
Contributor guide
Assessment
This issue has not been assessed yet.