How to force stop Copilot Session when setup step in copilot-setup-steps.yml fails?

[YanjieShiFennec]

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Hi all,
I found If any setup step fails by returning a non-zero exit code, Copilot will skip the remaining setup steps and begin working with the current state of its development environment. in GitHub document: https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/use-copilot-agents/coding-agent/customize-the-agent-environment#customizing-copilots-development-environment-with-copilot-setup-steps :

Here is part of my copilot-setup-steps.yml:

steps:
  - name: Check Token Presence
    run: |
      if [ -z "$TOKEN" ]; then
        echo "TOKEN IS EMPTY"
        exit 1
      else
        echo "TOKEN IS SET (Length: ${#TOKEN})"
      fi
    env:
      TOKEN: xxx
  - name: Checkout Repository with Submodules
    uses: actions/checkout@v4
    with:
      token: xxx
      submodules: recursive
  - name: Fetch All History Manually
    run: |
      git remote set-url origin https://x-access-token:xxx@github.com/${{ github.repository }}.git
      git fetch --unshallow origin
  - name: Check Submodule Presence
    run: |
      ls -la Automation_TestCase_Suite/Automation_TestCase_Suite
      if [ -d "Automation_TestCase_Suite/Automation_TestCase_Suite" ]; then
        echo "Submodule exists and initialized"
      else
        echo "Submodule not found or not initialized"
        exit 1
      fi

The exit 1 command has no effect; Copilot continues to operate, as described in the GitHub documentation.

Is there any way to force stop Copilot Session when setup step in copilot-setup-steps.yml fails?

[ChandrakantaMandal]

This is expected behavior today.

copilot-setup-steps.yml failures only stop the remaining setup steps — they don’t abort the Copilot agent session. The setup phase is treated as best-effort provisioning rather than a hard gate.

At the moment there isn’t a supported way to force-stop the session when a step fails. The usual workaround is to fail fast inside your repo scripts (or enforce strict checks in CI) so the agent can’t proceed meaningfully when the environment is invalid.

[pratikrath126]

Workaround: In your setup script, write a sentinel file on failure and have a background validation step that monitors for this file and kills the agent process (e.g., ). Cleanup: also remove the sentinel to avoid stale stops. Alternatively, use a timeout wrapper around the entire agent session so it exits automatically when your setup exceeds a threshold. These are self-managed approaches until GitHub adds a native abort-on-failure flag.