Copilot Auto-Retry

Automatically retries transient GitHub Copilot failures — rate limits, network errors, and service disruptions — so you don't have to sit and click "Try Again" manually.

The Problem

You kick off a task in Copilot agent mode, switch context to something else, and expect it to be done when you come back. Instead, somewhere in the middle, Copilot hit a rate limit or a network blip:

Sorry, you have exhausted this model's rate limit. Please wait a moment before trying again, or switch to GPT-4.1. Learn More

Now instead of a completed task, you're staring at a half-finished result and a "Try Again" button. You have to context-switch back, click retry, wait, and babysit it to completion — wasting the time you thought you were saving.

This extension fixes that. It automatically retries transient failures with exponential backoff so Copilot keeps working while you're away.

Features

• Automatic retry on rate limits and network errors — Monitors chat session files on disk for Copilot errors with a "Try Again" button and retries automatically
• Network recovery — Monitors connectivity to GitHub/Copilot endpoints and retries when your network comes back online
• Multi-window safe — Each VS Code window only monitors its own workspace sessions; retries never leak across windows
• Multi-session safe — Verifies the errored session is still the active one before retrying, so it won't submit a retry prompt into the wrong conversation
• Exponential backoff with jitter — Spreads retries over time to avoid hammering the API (2s → 4s → 8s → ...)
• Safety guardrails — Hard rate limits (max 15 retries/minute), cooldown periods, and a kill switch to prevent runaway loops
• Status bar indicator — Shows current state at a glance: idle, waiting, retrying, cooldown, or disabled
• Manual retry command — Trigger a retry immediately with Cmd+Shift+R / Ctrl+Shift+R
• Zero configuration — Works out of the box with sensible defaults

Install

VS Code Marketplace

Install from VS Code Marketplace

Or search for "Copilot Auto-Retry" in the VS Code Extensions view (Cmd+Shift+X / Ctrl+Shift+X).

Open VSX (for VS Codium, Gitpod, Theia, etc.)

Install from Open VSX

How It Works

1. VS Code writes Copilot chat sessions as JSONL files to disk. The extension watches these files for error entries (rate limits, network errors) that have a "Try Again" button.
2. When a retryable error is detected, a retry cycle begins with exponential backoff.
3. Before each retry attempt, the extension verifies the errored session is still the active one (to avoid submitting a retry prompt into the wrong conversation).
4. Each retry focuses the chat panel and submits a follow-up message asking Copilot to continue.
5. A separate network monitor detects connectivity recovery (offline → online) and triggers a retry if there's an active error in the current window.

Commands

Settings

All settings are under copilotAutoRetry.* in VS Code Settings.

What Errors Does It Handle?

The extension detects errors by reading chat session JSONL files. It retries errors that have a copilotContinueOnError confirmation button (the "Try Again" button).

Other error codes with a "Try Again" button are also retried. Errors without the button are ignored.

Status Bar

The status bar item (right side) shows the current state:

Click the status bar item to toggle the extension on/off.

Limitations

• Retries add a message to the conversation — There is no public API to press the "Try Again" button. The extension submits a follow-up prompt instead, which adds one extra turn. The AI sees the error in history and is asked to retry the same operation.
• Cannot target a specific session — workbench.action.chat.submit always goes to the currently active chat widget. The extension mitigates this by checking which session is active before retrying, and skipping if the user switched away.
• Relies on VS Code internal file layout — Session files are stored in workspaceStorage/<hash>/chatSessions/. If VS Code changes this layout, the extension will stop detecting errors (but won't break anything — it degrades gracefully).
• Active session check requires sqlite3 CLI — On macOS and most Linux systems, sqlite3 is pre-installed. On systems where it's missing, the active-session verification is skipped (retry proceeds but without the safety check).
• Single retry at a time — If multiple errors occur across different sessions in the same window, only the first triggers a retry cycle. Subsequent errors are ignored until the cycle completes.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.90 or later
• GitHub Copilot extension installed

Privacy

This extension:

• Reads only error metadata from chat session files (error codes and button data) — it does not read your prompts, responses, or conversation content
• Does not send any data to external services (beyond VS Code's built-in commands)
• Does not wrap or intercept Copilot's request pipeline
• Network probes send HTTP HEAD requests to api.github.com and Copilot endpoints only to check reachability

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for architecture details, design decisions, and development setup.

License

MIT

_{This extension was AI-generated with Claude Opus 4.6 (Anthropic) under human supervision by Max Mazurok.}