Agent customization for local continues to attempt to download old plugins from source after they have been uninstalled
@connor4312 is already working on this.
Since Jun 24, 2026.
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This issue has not been assessed yet.
Description
System/Tooling Context
- Copilot Chat Extension Version: 0.41
- VS Code Version: 1.126.0
- OS Version: Window 11
- Feature (e.g. agent/edit/ask mode): Agent Customization
- Selected model (e.g. GPT 4.1, Claude 3.7 Sonnet): NA (model does not matter in this case)
- Notes:
- For this bug I am using rwoll/markdown-review as an example as that is what is being used in the VS docs
- I think this could be easily fixed by having uninstalled plugins getting removed from the chat.plugins.marketplaces section in %APPDATA%/Code/User/settings.json
- This is largely just an annoying user experience, but also raises security risks as you can be downloading from repos/branches you don't want
Steps to Reproduce (simple but not realistic):
- Open VS Code settings (%APPDATA%/Code/User/settings.json)
- Add a link to a branch that no longer exists
"chat.plugins.marketplaces": [ "rwoll/markdown-review#BAD"] Chat: Install Plugin From Sourcefrom the Command Palette- Enter the sub url (rwoll/markdown-review for example)
- Note that you get an error message
Steps to Reproduce (realistic but much harder to setup):
- Create a simple agent plugin project in a new GitHub repo and setup to distribute any skills or actions
- Get plugin code in main
- Create a temp branch off of main
- Install the temp branch of the plugin using
Chat: Install Plugin From Sourcefrom the Command Palette
*You will need to follow this format to add from a branchORG/PROJECT#BRANCH - Open
Chat: Open Customizationsfrom the Command Palette and go to the Plugins page - Uninstall the plugin
- Delete the temp branch in git
- Delete the local cached downloaded code:
%USERPROFILE%/.vscode/agent-plugins/github.com
*This folder doesn't often get deleted, but it can for various reason - Install the plugin (without specifying the branch) using
Chat: Install Plugin From Sourcefrom the Command Palette - Note that you get an "Failed to install plugin" error message for the deleted branch
Workaround:
Manually delete old marketplace values from %APPDATA%/Code/User/settings.json
- Dominant language
- TypeScript
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