Allison announces the public preview release of isolated subagents in GitHub Copilot for JetBrains IDEs, Eclipse, and Xcode, showcasing how developers can harness autonomous agents for focused research, code review, and task automation.

GitHub Copilot Isolated Subagents Now Available in JetBrains, Eclipse, and Xcode

Author: Allison

GitHub Copilot now supports isolated subagents in public preview on JetBrains IDEs, Eclipse, and Xcode. This new feature allows developers to delegate focused tasks—such as researching, API design, code review, or technical discovery—to autonomous subagents within Copilot Chat. Each subagent operates in its own isolated context to keep your main conversation clean, letting you stay productive while offloading background or analysis work.

What’s New

  • Dedicated subagent context: Subagents use independent contexts, preventing long-running operations from cluttering your main chat.
  • Autonomous execution: Once activated, a subagent can work without further user input, ideal for background tasks like documentation lookup or competitive analysis.

How Subagents Work

Prerequisites: Custom agents must be configured in your environment. See the custom agents documentation or ask Copilot to list available custom agents.

Subagents operate through two main mechanisms:

1. Automatic Delegation

Copilot can delegate tasks automatically based on your description, the configuration of your custom agents, and current IDE context.

2. Explicit Invocation

You can address a subagent directly in your chat command. For example:

> Have the code-reviewer subagent look at my recent changes
> Let the documentation subagent generate API docs for this module

How to Get Started

  1. Update your IDE to the latest Copilot extension in JetBrains, Eclipse, or Xcode.
  2. Open Copilot Chat and start or continue a conversation.
  3. Invoke a subagent by asking Copilot or mentioning a specific custom agent, referencing your available custom agents.
  4. Review results as subagent output is returned to your conversation for further action.

Feedback Channels

Your input shapes the Copilot roadmap. Share feedback using in-IDE options or contribute to:

Start using isolated subagents today to streamline your development workflow and keep your primary chat focused.

This post appeared first on “The GitHub Blog”. Read the entire article here