Hi @beingminimal -

1. In the future we will move in that direction, but right now it is focused mostly on shared optimizations/learnings. Would be great to use it to drive down need for instruction files, but there is some debate around what should be in a repo since it is helpful to humans vs. what should be in something that is designed mostly for agents.
2. Not currently in the SDK, but we are looking at that right now. Our SDK should be close to the CLI capabilities, but some design goals are different.
3. Curious to know more about what you are looking for on this one. What workflow do you imagine?

Thanks for the questions!

Hi @PureWeen — thanks for the incredibly detailed proposal! The idea of graduating repeated memories into permanent instruction files is compelling. We do have visibility into memories via the UI tracked internally. The graduation path and instruction validation ideas are new and we'll discuss them with the team. Really appreciate the thoughtful write-up!

Thanks for reporting - we just fixed a bug in this settings page that was affecting the loading of memories for org-owned repos - could you please let us know if you are still seeing this inconsistency?

Hi @adityasharad! It seems to work well, thanks and apologies for the late reply!

Typical, 5 mins after posting one of our repos starts forming memories 🙄

Now that I can see something to provide more feedback on...

• Looks promising, the GitHub action related memories are things I've had to repeatedly remind Copilot about in the past. I look forward to never having to do that again in this repo!
• I wasn't expecting to see duplicate memories, without seeing exactly what's stored I guess they might actually have subtly different metadata. I could see this making curating memories a bit tricky.

Thank you for the feedback!

Looks promising, the GitHub action related memories are things I've had to repeatedly remind Copilot about in the past. I look forward to never having to do that again in this repo!

That's music to my ears -- we really appreciate you sharing this! ❤️

I wasn't expecting to see duplicate memories, without seeing exactly what's stored I guess they might actually have subtly different metadata. I could see this making curating memories a bit tricky.

This is an interesting point! The duplication is by design (see our blog post), though it's just a stop-gap until we implement a more elegant solution for agents to upvote useful memories and refresh their timestamp to indicate that they remain relevant. I can see how it makes curation hard 🤔

I wasn't expecting to see duplicate memories, without seeing exactly what's stored I guess they might actually have subtly different metadata. I could see this making curating memories a bit tricky.

This is an interesting point! The duplication is by design (see our blog post), though it's just a stop-gap until we implement a more elegant solution for agents to upvote useful memories and refresh their timestamp to indicate that they remain relevant. I can see how it makes curation hard 🤔

Ahh, I missed the reporting agent tag!

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Hi @grahame-student — great question! Memories and copilot-instructions.md serve complementary roles. Instructions are permanent repo-level guidance, while memories capture patterns learned across sessions. Our philosophy is that memories should reduce the burden of having to write and maintain custom instructions — over time, Copilot learns your patterns so you don't have to spell everything out. That said, they'll play well together, not replace each other. Thanks for sharing your experience about instructions becoming stale on follow-up turns — that's useful signal for us.

@rs38 it's there in the vs code insiders for a while already, and I've also seen this setting option available in stable vs code yesterday :)
https://www.reddit.com/r/GithubCopilot/comments/1oo4ty9/github_copilot_native_memory_tool_is_now/

thx, indeed it's there...

and not the 1st feature well hidden in vscode ;)

once activated it add this to the prompt:

<repoMemory>
If you come across an important fact about the codebase that could help in future code review or generation tasks, beyond the current task, use the memory tool to store it. Facts may be gleaned from the codebase itself or learned from user input or feedback. Such facts might include:
- Conventions, preferences, or best practices specific to this codebase that might be overlooked when inspecting only a limited code sample
- Important information about the structure or logic of the codebase
- Commands for linting, building, or running tests that have been verified through a successful run

<examples>
- "Use ErrKind wrapper for every public API error"
- "Prefer ExpectNoLog helper over silent nil checks in tests"
- "Always use Python typing"
- "Follow the Google JavaScript Style Guide"
- "Use html_escape as a sanitizer to avoid cross site scripting vulnerabilities"
- "The code can be built with `npm run build` and tested with `npm run test`"

</examples>

Only store facts that meet the following criteria:
<factsCriteria>
- Are likely to have actionable implications for a future task
- Are independent of changes you are making as part of your current task, and will remain relevant if your current code isn't merged
- Are unlikely to change over time
- Cannot always be inferred from a limited code sample
- Contain no secrets or sensitive data

</factsCriteria>

Always include the reason and citations fields.
Before storing, ask yourself: Will this help with future coding or code review tasks across the repository? If unsure, skip storing it.

If the user asks how to view or manage their memories, refer them to https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/use-copilot-agents/copilot-memory.

</repoMemory>

Hi @rs38 — glad you found it! As @filip-be mentioned, memory is available in VS Code. Thanks for confirming it's working for you!

Hi @OrenMe — thanks for the feedback! Fine-grained permissions for memory management is a great suggestion, especially for larger organizations. We'll take this back to the team.

Hi @beingminimal — thanks for following up! Memory editing is something we're interested in pursuing and are tracking internally. We can't commit to a timeline yet, but your feedback helps us prioritize. Stay tuned!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, @SteelSam99!

Hi @Realinvestrepublic - two things come to mind:

• We have a limited retention on memories for now, so it is possible that memories stored initially when you enabled the feature exceeded the retention period and got cleaned up, if there were no later agent runs that re-stored those memories. If I have your permission, I am happy to check our internal logs on when memories were stored in repos owned by your user.
• Could you share how you are trying to store a fresh memory (e.g. with Copilot CLI, or with Copilot cloud/coding agent), and what fails when you try?

Maybe you should retain obsolete memories

Another thing that would be nice is to be able to see when and where they were used

I am constantly using Copilot on a daily basis
there were never any memories stored as far as I know(been looking in this page once in a while),
I was under the impression that Copilot automatically saves to memory according to its decision, and this is not something I need to instruct it to do. I did not explicitly asked it to save, because whenever I suggested it, it did not understand what I mean. BTW, I am using the Copilot chat extension in Codespaces.

anyway you have my permission to look at the logs..
Thanks!

Hi @Realinvestrepublic, thanks for the report — sorry you're hitting this!

We're currently investigating a couple of issues that likely explain what you're seeing:

1. VSCode Copilot extension: We've identified a problem where the agentic memory store_memory tool call isn't being invoked reliably, which means memories aren't getting persisted even when you ask the agent to remember something. We have an active bug open for this and engineers are digging in.
2. Automatic memory generation: The agent is instructed to automatically generate memories that it thinks are widely applicable to the repository (conventions, patterns, etc.), and we're continuously tweaking how often that happens across agents (including Copilot code review), so frequency can vary while we tune the heuristics.

As an alternative for now, if you'd like to experience memory creation, you can try the Copilot CLI directly from a terminal against the same repository. You can always ask the agent to store a memory with phrases like "I want you to remember…" or even more explicitly "use the store_memory tool". Anything stored will show up in the same Repository Settings → Copilot → Memory view.

We'll follow up here once the VSCode fix lands. Thanks for your patience!

Thank you for the update,
copilot has recently (in the past few days) started using the memory tool occasionally

but in general, the best approach to really allow copilot to have memory is to add support for Mempalace(https://github.com/milla-jovovich/mempalace), so it could digest copilot chat sessions, I could somehow find 2 chat sessions .jsonl files somehow in the codespace I am working in
but not more than that...
please add that support! :)