Feature Request: Isolated local sandboxes for parallel Copilot Chat operations
Nobody has claimed this yet.
Assessment
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Newbie friendliness
- 25/100
- Issue type
- Feature
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Tech stack
- git, typescript
- Domain
- ai, desktop, developer-experience, devtools
Research direction
The issue names no files, tests, or entry points. Start by mapping the existing Copilot Chat and Source Control workflows, then define how isolated parallel work, branch creation, review, commit, push, and pull-request prompting should connect; done means concurrent tasks cannot affect the active workspace and approved changes follow the described flow.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Description
It would be highly beneficial to introduce the capability to execute Copilot Chat tasks within an isolated local container or sandbox, operating on a temporary duplicate of the current working directory to prevent side effects on the active workspace.
Currently, performing multiple complex refactoring tasks or concurrent chat operations in VS Code Copilot Chat risks file conflicts and state pollution, as all interactions target the primary repository.
By allowing users to send a prompt to a new local "container," the agent could work on a cloned instance of the project. This enables safe, parallel executions of multiple chat workflows without mutating the main codebase until the user explicitly reviews and merges the changes.
To streamline the integration of these isolated changes, the feature should default to creating a new Git branch. Upon approving the changes, the UI should present a popup proposing an AI-generated commit message with options to "Commit" or "Commit & Push". Selecting "Commit & Push" should seamlessly hook into the existing Source Control workflow, triggering the standard VS Code bottom-right toast notification offering to create a Pull Request.
- Dominant language
- TypeScript
- Stars
- 193k
- Forks
- 42.9k
- PR merge metrics
- PR metrics pending
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.
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