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Conflicting statements regarding GitHub Copilot content exclusion support in IDEs #41288
Description
Code of Conduct
- I have read and agree to the GitHub Docs project's Code of Conduct
What article on docs.github.com is affected?
https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/configure-content-exclusion/exclude-content-from-copilot
What part(s) of the article would you like to see updated?
Conflicting statements regarding content exclusion support in IDEs
There appears to be a contradiction in the GitHub documentation for Configuring content exclusion for your repository/organization/enterprise.
- Early in the page, it states:
"GitHub Copilot CLI, Copilot coding agent, and Agent mode in Copilot Chat in IDEs, do not support content exclusion."
This indicates that content exclusions do not work in IDEs when using Copilot through these modes.
- Later, the documentation provides instructions for testing content exclusions in IDEs (VS Code, JetBrains, Visual Studio, Vim/Neovim), implying that exclusions do work in IDEs, which contradicts the earlier statement.
Suggestion:
- Clarify which parts of Copilot respect content exclusions.
Additional information
No response
Activity
welcome commentedon Nov 16, 2025
Thanks for opening this issue. A GitHub docs team member should be by to give feedback soon. In the meantime, please check out the contributing guidelines.
[-]Conflicting statements regarding content exclusion support in IDEs[/-][+]Conflicting statements regarding GitHub Copilot content exclusion support in IDEs[/+]Sharra-writes commentedon Nov 17, 2025
@KyleEales The way the instructions for checking to see if Copilot is ignoring excluded files are written, I'm guessing the basic chat mode supports excluding files. But at this point there are so many versions/modes for Copilot it might be worthwhile to list the supported ones explicitly. I don't know what all of them are, even using Copilot almost daily. That note is also really unclear in its wording, so I'm going to clarify that for sure.
github-actions commentedon Dec 23, 2025
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github-actions commentedon Jul 31, 2026
Thanks for opening an issue! We've triaged this issue for technical review by a subject matter expert 👀
github-actions commentedon Aug 31, 2026
This is a gentle reminder for the Technical Content team that this issue is waiting for technical review by a subject matter expert (SME).
github-actions commentedon Oct 5, 2026
A stale label has been added to this issue, because it has been open for 30 days with no activity. If you think this issue should remain open, please add a new comment.