Agent customization for local continues to attempt to download old plugins from source after they have been uninstalled

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#322,805 0 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@connor4312 is already working on this.

Since Jun 24, 2026.

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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):

  1. Open VS Code settings (%APPDATA%/Code/User/settings.json)
  2. Add a link to a branch that no longer exists "chat.plugins.marketplaces": [ "rwoll/markdown-review#BAD"]
    Image
  3. Chat: Install Plugin From Source from the Command Palette
  4. Enter the sub url (rwoll/markdown-review for example)
  5. Note that you get an error message
    Image

Steps to Reproduce (realistic but much harder to setup):

  1. Create a simple agent plugin project in a new GitHub repo and setup to distribute any skills or actions
  2. Get plugin code in main
  3. Create a temp branch off of main
  4. Install the temp branch of the plugin using Chat: Install Plugin From Source from the Command Palette
    *You will need to follow this format to add from a branch ORG/PROJECT#BRANCH
  5. Open Chat: Open Customizations from the Command Palette and go to the Plugins page
  6. Uninstall the plugin Image
  7. Delete the temp branch in git
  8. 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
  9. Install the plugin (without specifying the branch) using Chat: Install Plugin From Source from the Command Palette
  10. 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

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