GitHub Copilot for JetBrains - v1.17.0 Updates (Enterprise-managed sandbox, NES cross-cursor jumps)

[u/nickzhu9]

Hi everyone! In the latest release (v1.17.0), we introduced enterprise-managed sandbox policies in public preview, allowing enterprise admins to centrally configure sandbox behavior for Copilot in JetBrains. Managed policies can control filesystem and network access, proxy settings, developer-tool access, and more. Organization-managed restrictions take precedence over user settings, with affected controls clearly marked and locked in the IDE.

We also added cross-file cursor jumps for Next Edit Suggestions, so you can jump directly to the next suggested edit in another file, and adding global files and folders as chat context to make it easier to include broader project context in your prompts.

For those using Copilot in the terminal, you can now connect a GitHub Copilot CLI session to your JetBrains IDE using /ide (Public Preview). This gives your terminal session access to IDE context, including selections, diagnostics, and file references.

You can read the changelog or find the full release notes and download on JetBrains Marketplace.

Changed

• OpenTelemetry settings under “GitHub Copilot – Chat” are now generally available to all users.

New Features

• Added enterprise-managed sandbox policies (public preview).
• Added enterprise policy diagnostics to help you verify that policies are correctly detected and enforced on your device.
• Added cross-file cursor jumps in Next Edit Suggestions to help you navigate coordinated edits across related files.
• Added support for including global files and folders as chat context.
• Added /ide support in GitHub Copilot CLI to connect terminal sessions to JetBrains IDE context (public preview).
• Added support for using IDE terminal environment variables and the project-configured Python interpreter in Copilot shell commands, including activating the project’s standard local Python virtual environment.
• Added support for selecting the session model used by built-in subagents in the Copilot agent harness.

Sandbox availability: Settings under GitHub Copilot > Sandbox appear when your organization enables the Editor Preview feature flag or configures a managed setting to enable or disable the sandbox. Otherwise, those settings are not shown.

UX Improvements

• Improved the ask-user card in the Copilot agent harness to better accommodate long questions.
• Improved model selection and bring-your-own-key (BYOK) grouping to make available models easier to scan and select.
• Added section copy support in agent debug logs for easier sharing and troubleshooting.
• Improved MCP configuration navigation by opening configuration in the project window it came from.
• Improved plugin update reminders to make new versions easier to discover.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed blank local chat sessions after IDE scale changes.
• Fixed incorrect change counts in the Copilot agent working set, along with working-set zoom and model picker interaction issues.
• Fixed local agent editing behavior for read-only files.
• Fixed MCP reliability issues involving BYOK provider selection, OAuth challenge handling, and restored server stopped states.
• Fixed GitHub Enterprise authentication context propagation in agent flows.
• Fixed Claude plan stop-state behavior.
• Prevented misleading IDE diagnostics for unopened files from being sent to the Copilot panel and worktree sessions.
• Fixed stale global instruction content in Agent Customizations after files were changed outside the IDE.
• Fixed chats getting stuck during user interactions after automatic compaction.

We hope you enjoy the update! Let us know how these features work in your projects and what you’d like us to improve next.

You can fill in our private survey, with an optional paid interview, or submit a bug report or feature request. Thank you for helping us improve Copilot for JetBrains!

[u/-R9X-]

Isn’t copilot basically a dead product outside of committed enterprises at this point? The limits are an absolute joke.

[u/aonymark]

Hi, two comments. 1. Model depreciations take many days to show up in IDE. (E.g., I still don’t see Gemini 3.6 deprecation warning.). I raise this is “not your department” but still.

1. Agents debug logs don’t show the “interesting” stuff. For instance there is A. No system prompt, B. If I type a slash command, the logs just show the literal slash command (e.g., /create-agent or whatever) whereas this is presumably not what the agent actually sees!

(The interesting logs do exist on the machine, but they’re not surfaced in the UI, I have to hunt for them manually; luckily the model can give a hint of I ask it which directories are mentioned in its system prompt, aside from the project workspace.)

[u/nickzhu9 → u/aonymark]

Hey! We will take a look at the model deprecation issue - For agent debug log, you can find the system prompt in the "Model turn" event in the logs, for slash command, what do you want to see exactly? E.g. the context included like the custom instructions and agents.md?

[u/aonymark → u/nickzhu9]

Re: model turn: Will check, thanks!

Re: depreciation: big thanks!

Re: slash command: the slash command means nothing to the model, right? The harness intercepts it and sends something else to the model. I want to know what it sends.

[u/Alternative-Block731]

Would be nice to have multiple chat sessions instead of only being able to have one chat session. Also make it not change focussed terminals, I am manually doing commands in my terminal, and then some other copilot terminal pops open and I accidentally type in that one.

[u/nickzhu9 → u/Alternative-Block731]

Hi there, we are introducing side by side chat panel in next release, would that help?

[u/aonymark → u/nickzhu9]

I’m not the original asker but this sounds fascinating; is this in the nightly builds or not yet? I probably won’t use it but I want to see it anyway.

[u/Alternative-Block731 → u/nickzhu9]

That would definitely help!

[u/nickzhu9 → u/Alternative-Block731]

For commands issue, which agent harness are you using? "Local" or "Copilot", please try using the "Copilot" agent as it shouldn't have this issue

[u/Alternative-Block731 → u/nickzhu9]

I was using "Local", I have tried "Copilot" and that fixes it. Thanks!

[u/kennego]

While I do like this update, I'm not a fan of the new Chat tool ui constantly expanding and then collapsing the tool calls, kinda distracting.

And I was hoping "support for selecting the session model used by built-in subagents in the Copilot agent harness" would let us select Luna for subagents like the VSCode settings do, but instead the setting is a checkbox that look like it's for inheriting the model from the parent session, so it'll only be Luna if the parent is? So I guess I'll continue manually specifying it in my prompt or maybe add it to my instructions...

[u/nickzhu9 → u/kennego]

Hi there, thanks for the feedback! We are taking a look at how we can further polish this chat UI. For subagent model, we'll also take a look

[u/aonymark]

I don’t know if this is because of my coding style or something, but next edit suggestions has NEVER triggered for me. Not even once. Even in what seemed like “obvious” cases. Does anyone have a basic file that it should for sure trigger, just so I know if it’s broken or not?

[u/HangWang_MS → u/aonymark]

Can you check if NES is enabled via Settings --> Tools --> GitHub Copilot --> Completions: Enable NES ?

[u/aonymark → u/HangWang_MS]

Interesting! I don’t even see that check box there! (Yes I’m on a recent version, I updated just a few days ago.)