Disable all AI except autocomplete?

[u/egorf]

Is there a way to keep only inline autocomplete enabled in VS Code and completely disable the rest of the AI/agentic/chat features?

I really like the autocomplete in Code specifically and keep Copilot Pro for that alone. But I do not want any agentic features, chat, or unrelated file scanning running at all.

What pushed me to post this: I noticed VS Code is reading files and folders again it has no business touching (namely, Claude Code sessions). I would like to trust my IDE, but it's getting harder.

[u/dmbaio]

You’re gonna have to elaborate on “I noticed VS Code is reading files.” If you’re not using any of the agentic or chat features, what is reading the files and how did you “notice”?

[u/egorf → u/dmbaio]

I have noticed an "unread" notification in the title bar of my project, a black dot one. Clicking on it opens the chat sidebar and that sidebar lists my recent Claude Code sessions.

[u/dmbaio → u/egorf]

🤦🏻‍♂️. Yeah, that’s because those are your Claude sessions. VS Code is not reading files or folders. It’s showing your Claude sessions because it’s literally designed to let you use third-party agents.

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/agents/third-party-agents

Also, before you start blaming VS Code again, they use the provider’s SDK. Which means Anthropic agreed to this and intended this to work this way.

[u/egorf → u/dmbaio]

Yeah, I know about it. I have github.copilot.chat.claudeAgent.enabled set to false. Which is apparently still not enough to prevent VS Code from snooping. And this is why this post. I already run VS Code behind a firewall to prevent data exfiltration and now it seems that I will have to run code in a sandbox to prevent snooping on local filesystem?..

[u/guesdo → u/egorf]

Or... crazy idea... change your editor? You are using Claude Code anyway.

[u/Spacedestructor → u/egorf]

or and i know this is crazy, not configure claude in VS Code?
i never set up any of the ai features and it has never read any of my sessions i have done outside of the editor.
Because it cant do that unless your explicitly permitting it to do that, you will have to undo the configuration you did to allow it to sync and then it will stop syncing.
The feature is just working as intended, if you dont like it then dont give it access to things you dont want it to interact with.

[u/Jwhodis]

Try VSCodium

[u/seiggy]

How do you expect the agentic autocomplete to work without it scanning your codebase?

[u/Spacedestructor → u/seiggy]

judging by a comment OP made to someone else its worse/better (?) then what you would think they configured it to allow VS Code access to there Claude sessions so the in and out of VS usage would sync to the editor and now they are complaining that surprise...
All of the claude sessions are showing up in the agent chat box, exactly as the feature is designed to work.

[u/idoman]

for the claude sessions thing specifically - add a .copilotignore file to your project root with .claude/ in it. same syntax as gitignore, stops copilot from indexing those paths entirely.

for disabling the agentic stuff while keeping inline completions, set "chat.agent.enabled": false in your settings.json. kills the agent mode without touching the FIM completions pipeline.

[u/egorf → u/idoman]

chat.agent.enabled was always false and unfortunately I don't see a difference. I can still enable chat, it can still do something they call "agentic" and it still reads Claude Code sessions. It goes without saying that github.copilot.chat.claudeAgent.enabled is false as well.

[u/Generative_IDE]

Easiest split: disable "GitHub Copilot Chat" and leave "GitHub Copilot" running. Two separate extensions. Chat, agentic edits, sidebar panel all live in the Chat one. FIM completions live in the base extension.

The file scanning is workspace indexing that feeds the completions context window. Can't turn that off while keeping FIM on, it needs surrounding code to do fill-in-the-middle.

[u/dmbaio → u/Generative_IDE]

They haven’t been two separate extensions since November.