Changing the initial commit from Copilot Coding Agent

[nnellanspdl]

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Copilot Coding Agent

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We have rulesets in place that require a ticket number to be present on every commit on our repositories.

In my testing of Copilot Coding Agent (CCA), I see that it always creates its first commit with the message "Initial plan". This commit does not follow our standards.

I tried to create a .github/copilot-instructions.md file that specifies every commit message must being with ticket number XXX. I then submitted a new task to the CCA and the CCA did not follow this guidance. It still created its first commit with the message "Initial plan".

Any subsequent commits from CCA (after the first one) are created correctly, and they have the ticket number in them. It's that first commit which is causing problems.

Is there anything I can do about this? Will that first commit always say "Initial plan" regardless of my custom instructions?

[oxSwight]

Right now that first commit with the message “Initial plan” is built into how the Copilot Coding Agent works, and you can’t override it through .github/copilot-instructions.md or any other configuration. The agent automatically creates that commit when it starts a new task, and it doesn’t follow your custom commit message rules for that one. All later commits do respect your instructions, but the first one is system-generated. The only real workarounds are either to create the branch and make the initial compliant commit yourself before running the agent, or to adjust your repository rules so that the ticket requirement applies only to subsequent commits or to the pull request title instead.

[RainbowMango]

Any plan to omit the Initial plan commit? From the user's perspective, this commit is meaningless.

[nnellanspdl]

I re-opened this discussion as I have a follow-up question.

I updated my Ruleset to allow commit messages of Initial plan. However, that does not work. Somehow, Coding Agent still tries to do something that does not conform to this.

Is it possible that the agent is making a commit with a message like "XYZ" and then at a later stage is updating the commit message to say "Initial plan"?

Simply allowing a commit message of Initial plan is not enough here, unfortunately.