Session Manager for GitHub Copilot

Search, resume and clean up your GitHub Copilot CLI sessions and VS Code chats. Full-text search across every session and message on your machine, in milliseconds.

Unofficial extension, not affiliated with GitHub or Microsoft.

Why

Copilot CLI sessions pile up in ~/.copilot/session-state, and VS Code keeps chats per workspace, so finding "that conversation where we fixed the build" means guessing the folder and scrolling. This extension puts all of them in one searchable list, wherever they were started:

• Copilot CLI first: resume any CLI session in a terminal with one click, see which sessions are in use by a running Copilot process, and open CLI sessions in VS Code's Chat view.
• VS Code chats from every workspace, not only the one you have open.
• Clean up safely: delete old sessions and chats, with guards for sessions that are in use, owned by other apps, or still open in a VS Code window.
• Organized by repository, with merging for repositories that were renamed or moved.

Features

• Quick search (Ctrl+Alt+F, Cmd+Alt+F on macOS, or Session Manager for GitHub Copilot: Search Sessions…): type to search session titles and every user and Copilot message. All terms must match (case-insensitive). Results show the project, age, badges and the matching message.
  • Enter shows the conversation in the session browser (configurable, see below).
  • Item buttons: Resume in terminal (Copilot CLI sessions), Open in VS Code chat and Copy resume command.
  • Title buttons: show or hide sessions marked as done, and open the session browser.
• Session browser (Session Manager for GitHub Copilot: Open Session Browser): a session list and a conversation reader in an editor tab, themed like your editor, with highlighted matches, a repository filter, project merging, copy buttons and delete. It updates automatically while sessions change on disk.
• Resume in terminal: opens a terminal in the session's folder and runs copilot --resume=<id>. Asks first if the session is in use by another Copilot process.
• Open in VS Code chat:
  • VS Code chats open in the Chat editor when they belong to the current window's folder or workspace. Otherwise the extension offers to open their folder in a new window, where the chat is listed in the Chat view's history (VS Code only shows the chats of the open workspace).
  • Copilot CLI sessions open as Copilot CLI chat sessions (requires the GitHub Copilot Chat extension).
• Delete: removes Copilot CLI session folders, and VS Code chats the way VS Code does (chat file, editing session and their entries in the workspace database). Sessions in use, owned by other apps (for example Windows Terminal Agent), or whose VS Code window is open cannot be deleted.
• Merge projects of renamed or moved repositories. A merge groups the old project's sessions under the new one; optionally it also moves them to the new project's folder, so VS Code and the Copilot CLI list them there too (VS Code chats only while neither folder is open in VS Code). Unmerging moves them back.
• 14 UI languages in the session browser, including right-to-left layouts.

Privacy

Everything runs locally. There is no telemetry and nothing is sent over the network. Session files are only read, except when you confirm Delete or merge projects and choose to move their sessions.

How it works

The extension starts a small native backend (bin/copilot-session-manager-sidecar, written in Rust) on first use and talks to it with JSON lines over stdio. The backend keeps an in-memory index of ~/.copilot/session-state/*/events.jsonl and VS Code's chat storage. The first search indexes everything (a few seconds for about a thousand sessions); after that, only changed files are read again, and a file watcher reports changes. The backend stops after 10 minutes without use while no session browser is open.

There is also a standalone desktop app with the same features, for use without VS Code. Project merges are shared with it (project-merges.json in %APPDATA%/com.luiscantero.copilot-session-manager on Windows).

Settings

Limitations

• Set as done is display-only: VS Code owns that state, so mark sessions as done in VS Code.
• Session paths assume the default VS Code (stable) profile.
• VS Code chats of the workspace you have open cannot be deleted, because VS Code would write them back; use the desktop app with VS Code closed.
• Opening Copilot CLI sessions in the Chat view relies on the GitHub Copilot Chat extension's copilotcli chat session provider.

Install

Install the extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace, search for Session Manager for GitHub Copilot in VS Code's Extensions view, or run:

code --install-extension luiscantero.copilot-session-manager

Build from source

Requirements: Node.js 20+, Rust (stable).

cd vscode-extension
npm install
npm run package   # copies ../src, builds the sidecar and TypeScript, writes copilot-session-manager-<platform>-<version>.vsix
code --install-extension copilot-session-manager-win32-x64-0.4.0.vsix

The VSIX contains a native binary, so it is platform-specific. npm run package builds for the current platform; to build for another one, set SIDECAR_TARGET (Rust target triple, for npm run build) and VSCE_TARGET (for example darwin-arm64, for node scripts/package.mjs). To package a backend built elsewhere, point SIDECAR_BINARY at it instead of SIDECAR_TARGET.

For Linux, build a static backend (no glibc version requirement) with cargo-zigbuild, for example in WSL, and package it from Windows:

wsl -e bash -lc "cd vscode-extension/sidecar && rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl && CARGO_TARGET_DIR=~/.cache/csm-sidecar cargo zigbuild --release --locked --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl"
$env:SIDECAR_BINARY = "\\wsl.localhost\Ubuntu\home\<user>\.cache\csm-sidecar\x86_64-unknown-linux-musl\release\copilot-session-manager-sidecar"
$env:VSCE_TARGET = "linux-x64"
npm run package

On Linux and macOS the extension sets the backend's executable bit on first use, since a VSIX packaged on Windows does not keep it.

For development, run npm run build once, then npm run watch, and start VS Code with code --extensionDevelopmentPath=<this folder>. The UI files in media/app are copied from ../src by npm run build:assets.

Feedback

Report issues and ideas at github.com/luiscantero/CopilotSessionManager/issues.