Compaction fails with "CAPIError: 400 Tool choice must be auto" on custom models
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Description
Describe the bug
Session compaction (manual /compact and automatic compaction at the context threshold) fails with:
Compaction failed. CAPIError: 400 Tool choice must be auto
whenever the session is running a custom model (e.g. ~z-ai/glm-latest registered through a custom OpenRouter-compatible provider). The compaction summary request appears to force a tool call, and CAPI rejects non-auto tool choice for custom models, so compaction can never succeed on them.
Switching the same session to a first-party model (e.g. GPT-5.6 Luna or Claude Sonnet 4.6) and running /compact succeeds, confirming the failure is tied to the custom model's tool-choice capability, not the session contents.
Affected version
GitHub Copilot CLI 1.0.80 (also confirmed still present in the 1.0.81-14 prerelease)
Steps to reproduce the behavior
- Register a custom model via an OpenRouter-compatible provider (e.g.
~z-ai/glm-latest) - Start a session on that model and work until auto-compaction triggers (or run
/compactmanually) - Observe:
Compaction failed. CAPIError: 400 Tool choice must be auto - Switch the session to a first-party model and run
/compact— it succeeds
Expected behavior
Compaction should succeed on custom models, e.g. by falling back to tool_choice: auto with a prompt-based summary when the selected model does not support forced tool choice.
Additional context
- Reproducible across multiple sessions and repositories whenever the session model is a custom one; first-party models (GPT/Claude/Gemini) compact fine.
- After the failed compaction the session keeps growing and eventually hits context/size failures, since auto-compaction can never complete on custom models.
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 reproducing the failure with /compact on a custom OpenRouter-compatible model, then compare it with a first-party model. No source file or test is named in the report, so trace the compaction request from the /compact entry point and inspect the tool-choice handling. Done means both manual and automatic compaction complete successfully for custom models without the CAPI error.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Domain
- api, cli
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 3/5
- Estimated time
- 1-2 days
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 45/100