Add a way to list currently running Copilot CLI sessions with their status
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- Dominant language
- Shell
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Description
Feature request: Anthropic's Claude Code CLI has a claude agents --json command that lists every currently-running interactive session on the machine, each with an id, name, cwd, and status (idle/busy/waiting/blocked). This makes it possible to build an external dashboard/monitor across multiple parallel sessions (e.g. several terminal tabs or IDE panes each running their own session).
Copilot CLI has no equivalent today — --resume/--session-id//session all operate on a specific known session for resuming, not on discovering other currently-active sessions and their live state. The closest thing is the undocumented ~/.copilot/session-state//events.jsonl per-session event log, but it's internal, unversioned, and provides no "is this session still alive" signal (no PID recorded anywhere).
Ask: a copilot sessions --json (or similar) command/flag that lists currently-active sessions with at least an id, working directory, and a coarse status (busy/idle, and ideally "waiting for tool permission" as a third state) — enabling external tooling to build a multi-session status dashboard the same way it's possible for Claude Code today.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by examining the existing session controls (--resume, --session-id, and /session) and the undocumented ~/.copilot/session-state//events.jsonl logs described in the issue. Determine how active sessions and their live state can be identified, then define completion around a JSON listing that reports each active session's id, working directory, and coarse status.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- shell
- Domain
- cli, tooling
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100