GitHub Copilot Cloud Agent does not create branches

[forteddyt]

Type: Bug

I used GitHub UI to assign a work item to the Copilot agent. From that, the agent created a 'copilot/remove-custom-anchor-points' branch and opened a PR. I reviewed and approved the PR, merged the PR, and deleted the branch (as I do with all PR branches).

Now, I'm trying to delegate a new, separate task to the GitHub Copilot Cloud Agent from VS Code. I've built up some context and I am ready to send it to the cloud. However, when I try to delegate the work, I get this error: "The cloud agent was unable to create a pull request with the specified base branch 'copilot/remove-custom-anchor-points'. Please push branch to the remote and try again."

This new task which is producing this error message is not related to the remove-custom-anchor-points task that was completed by the agent earlier.

I would have expected the agent to create an entirely new branch, with a name related to the current task.

Extension version: 0.33.2
VS Code version: Code 1.106.2 (1e3c50d, 2025-11-19T16:56:50.023Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200
Modes:

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-Core Processor (16 x 4192)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok gpu_compositing: enabled multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on opengl: enabled_on rasterization: enabled raw_draw: disabled_off_ok skia_graphite: disabled_off trees_in_viz: disabled_off video_decode: enabled video_encode: enabled vulkan: disabled_off webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled webgpu: enabled webnn: disabled_off
Load (avg)	undefined
Memory (System)	31.12GB (12.60GB free)
Process Argv	--crash-reporter-id b599a39f-443c-4db6-91a6-f341e4ec0bbf
Screen Reader	no
VM	0%

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[joshspicer]

coding agent requires the base branch on the remote to proceed. The instruction Please push branch to the remote and try again." is accurate. You can imagine some folks would not expect this behavior and not want their base branch to auto-push.

We've automated this in the latest pre-release though, please give it a try there and let us know how it helps

[forteddyt]

We've automated this in the latest pre-release though, please give it a try there and let us know how it helps

I think that fixes one of the two issues, thanks! I'll give it a try and report back

However, @joshspicer, I think there is another issue. Why did the agent use the base branch of 'copilot/remove-custom-anchor-points', at all? 'remove-custom-anchor-points' was completely unrelated to the topic I was working on in VS Code. 'copilot/remove-custom-anchor-points' did exist as a branch for a previous (GitHub UI-triggered) agent task, but it was not relevant to the task I was working on in VS Code

[joshspicer]

We use the branch you current have checked out, did you have remove-custom-anchor-point checked out?

[forteddyt]

I did not. copilot/remove-custom-anchor-point, in this case, was purely a remote branch (created via GitHub UI agent). Not sure if it was fetched on my local, but it was definitely not checked out to on my local

There was never a direct remove-custom-anchor-point branch

[forteddyt]

Just tried to delegate to Cloud Agent again, and failed with new error: "Failed to find pull request"

20251126-0509-46.7722594.mp4

on main branch, as well:

[forteddyt]

huh... interestingly enough, the PRs were made:

is this just a race condition issue? Copilot doesn't wait long enough for the PR to be created and thus this error is thrown?