Copilot Agents always rewrite PR titles/descriptions

[peterwwillis]

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Whenever you have a Copilot Agent working on a PR, and you ask the agent to do something in the PR, it rewrites the title and description. 50 different changes could have happened, but if the last thing you ask the agent is "update the readme", then the title and description only say "updated readme". I then have to ask the AI to review all added or changed files and write a new description, which is then way too long. Then I have to copy all that into a squash commit message. This is ridiculous.

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[DevFoxxx]

Hi @peterwwillis, I totally feel your pain. Here’s a quick strategy to handle this:

1. Manual Edits First: complete your manual code changes before asking the agent for metadata updates or descriptions to minimize overwrites.
2. Instruction Overriding: when prompting the agent, add: 'Update [X], but DO NOT modify the current PR title and description'.
3. The 'Draft' trick: keep your detailed notes in a local file or a Tasklist; the agent currently lacks long-term context persistence for PR summaries.
4. Use external LLMs (Gemini/Claude): if the agent’s summaries are too long or messy, copy your git diff into Google Gemini or Claude. They are much better at generating concise, professional squash commit messages and PR descriptions without the 'ridiculous' length issues."

[Jaiminkansagara1327]

Hey @peterwwillis, I’ve bumped into this too and it’s really frustrating when a long PR ends up with a title like “update readme”.
​

Two small workarounds that help me:

When I ask the agent to do something, I always add “don’t change the PR title or description, just update the code/files”.

If I already have a good title/description, I quickly copy it somewhere else so I can paste it back if Copilot overwrites it.
​

It would be great if GitHub added a simple setting to stop Copilot from editing PR titles/descriptions at all.

[shinybrightstar]

Welcome to the GitHub Community, @peterwwillis, we're happy you're here! You are more likely to get a useful response if you are posting your question(s) in the applicable category. Check out this Guide on how to post in the right category. It'll ensure your questions and discussions reach the right people faster!

This particular discussion belongs in the Copilot Conversations category, I've gone ahead and moved it for you. Good luck!

[H-Kigure]

以前の様に、CopilotがPRを自動で作成しレビューする形のほうが良かったと思います。
これはとても邪悪です。

[wenn]

Addressing PR comments

This is generated. It is pretty bad devex - it rewrites the original title/description with the latest commit, which provides very little context to what's going on in the PR.