GitHub Copilot CLI

Posted on: Thu 08 January 2026

Agent-powered, GitHub-native

Execute coding tasks with an agent that knows your repositories, issues, and pull requests—all natively in your terminal.

It’s really a knockoff of Claude Code but, as might be expected, incorporates nice integration with GitHub features like issues and PRs. Interestingly, the default model is Claude Sonnet 4.5.

Using GitHub Copilot locally is what grabs me.

The command-line interface (CLI) for GitHub Copilot allows you to use Copilot directly from your terminal. You can use it to answer questions, write and debug code, and interact with GitHub.com. For example, you can ask Copilot to make some changes to a project and create a pull request.

GitHub Copilot CLI gives you quick access to a powerful AI agent, without having to leave your terminal. It can help you complete tasks more quickly by working on your behalf, and you can work iteratively with GitHub Copilot CLI to build the code you need.

But then you can actually delegate work back to a cloud agent:

Delegate tasks to Copilot coding agent

The delegate command lets you push your current session to Copilot coding agent on GitHub. This lets you hand off work while preserving all the context Copilot needs to complete your task.

You can delegate a task using the slash command, followed by a prompt:

/delegate complete the API integration tests and fix any failing edge cases

Copilot will ask to commit any of your unstaged changes as a checkpoint in a new branch it creates. Copilot coding agent will open a draft pull request, make changes in the background, and request a review from you.

Copilot will provide a link to the pull request and agent session on GitHub once the session begins.

So far, the best cloud agent experience for me has been with GitHub Copilot’s agents, so a TUI specifically for GitHub Copilot is a welcome addition.