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VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage
(news.ycombinator.com)
this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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This has been fixed. It was a bug, see this merge request: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/pull/313931
There a quite a lot of toxic comments there already, please dont add to the pile.
please do. it is first time i am hearing about this, for example. and i have my doubts this "bug" would have been fixed if it were not for a "lot of toxic comments"
There is a difference between the justified public backlash that happened and the piling on the developer who merged the request after it was fixed.
there is and this is the former.
and as the linked news is 20 hours old it is definitely fresh news that people want and should know about, despite the fact it has been fixed since then. the fix doesn't mean it didn't happen.
They specifically asked not to comment on the PR, comments on the PR don't give the issue any extra visibility. They didn't ask not to comment here or to stop making threads, they linked a PR and then asked not dogpile that specific PR.
oh! well now it makes sense. i misread that part.
was the buggy commit done… because of AI?
That's seems potentially likely. I can imagine maybe the programmer had a written at some point that the AI itself needed to state it was written by copilot whenever it made merges. Then when it worked on that area, that directive got skewed and ended up applying it to VS Code itself.
The bug was fixed, but it still adds itself as co-author by default if you as much as use code completion powered by Copilot.
Combined with the fact that this doesn't show up in your commit message dialog, and that is nothing but blatant advertising, this is just unacceptable.
I don't necessarily mind crediting Copilot if it did substantial amount of the work, but it also seems redundant nowadays when AI has become as ubiquitous as using an IDE. Having used it for code completion just doesn't seem to warrant co-author credit in that context. In other words if I had been able to edit that part of the commit message I'd probably be a lot less annoyed by this.
As it is, it's just blatant overreach by Microsoft. Microsoft doing Microsoft things. Nothing has changed since the 90s.
Yeah, I don't include the person down the hall when I ask for their help unless they are making final design decisions alongside me. If copilot is doing 40% of the work, sure. Just existing nearby isn't enough.
Also, CoPilot isn't a person. It shouldn't be a co-author for the same reason Google and StackOverflow aren't.
If I copy a solution from SO I usually put in a comment with a link to the answer to cite my source. I don't mind crediting where credit is due, but claiming co-author for a spelling correction is a bit much.
Absolutely. I was just describing where I put the bar, and it isn't even anywhere near it.
Especially after they dropped intellisense in favor of copilot. Just typical M$ shit.
If VSCode is just hijacking the in-IDE commit UI, is bypassing it as simple as committing from the command line?
Yes, you can get around it that way. You can also just disable it in VSCode settings. I could also just not use VSCode or CoPilot at all. It's not that can't be worked around; it's that we shouldn't have to. It's the violation of trust we're having issues with.
Incorrect. Crab together strong. Microsoft needs to know they fucked up.
The people in that thread who complain and threaten that they are Seriously Considering not trusting Microsoft any more unless they shape up immediately very soon...
If they had any threshold for when they would pass judgement or take any action to switch to alternatives, it would have been passed long ago.
They are just whining until they get distracted and forget about it. They will make the exact same noises the next time something like this happens. And the next, and the next...
I am trying Zed now, I am quite attached to VS Code but my IDE is less dependent than my OS (I am also evaluating Linux distros, I already don't run Windows on my laptops)