github / github/copilot-cli

Resuming a session has strange ux with regards to model and reasoning

Open
#4,340 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

area:models area:sessions
Dominant language
Shell
Stars
11.2k
Forks
1.9k
Avg merge
14h 16m
Merged PRs (30d)
6

Description

Describe the bug

If you have a session that's was done on gpt-5.6-terra with medium, and you --resume it, with either --model=gpt-5.6-luna --reasoning-effort=xhigh or gpt-5.6-luna + xhigh in your ~/.copilot/settings.json, the reasoningEffort is honoured, but the model is not, and your resumed session will be on gpt-5.6-terra xhigh

Feels like this should be consistent? It should either:

  • Explicitly honour the original session, keeping the settings the same
  • Explicitly honour your copilot CLI args and/or settings.json

I would rather the latter personally, but raising this as a UX bug.

This also affects sessions resumed via copilot-sdk.

Affected version

1.0.77

Steps to reproduce the behavior

No response

Expected behavior

No response

Additional context

No response

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start at the --resume flow and trace how --model, --reasoning-effort, and ~/.copilot/settings.json are applied when restoring a session. Check the corresponding copilot-sdk resume path as well. Done means the chosen precedence is consistent for both CLI and SDK sessions, with regression coverage for model and reasoning effort.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
shell
Domain
ai, cli
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
52/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.