GitHub Copilot Brings Its CLI Agent to JetBrains, Adds a REST API for Cloud Agents

GitHub shipped two related Copilot updates on May 13: the CLI agent is now available inside JetBrains IDEs, and a new REST API lets teams kick off cloud agent tasks without opening any UI.

Copilot CLI agent in JetBrains IDEs

The long-running terminal agent that Copilot ships as part of its CLI can now be invoked directly from IntelliJ IDEA, WebStorm, PyCharm, and the other JetBrains products. Previously, CLI agent sessions were separate from IDE workflows. Now there’s a handoff built in.

When you delegate a task from the IDE, you pick one of two isolation modes. Worktree isolation runs the agent on a separate Git branch, so nothing touches your current working copy until you decide to review and merge. Workspace isolation applies changes directly, which is faster when you’re iterating quickly and don’t need branch separation. Both modes show up in the new unified sessions view.

The sessions view is a sidebar panel that tracks every running agent session: the title, agent type, elapsed time, and current status. You can filter by type or status. It handles CLI agent sessions, custom agents, and cloud agents in one place instead of requiring you to context-switch to the terminal.

Two smaller additions shipped alongside this: agents can now ask clarifying questions mid-task through the ask question tool, which reduces the number of wrong-direction runs when the initial prompt is ambiguous. And you can now define global custom agents via ~/.copilot/agents/.agent.md, which applies across all workspaces rather than requiring per-project setup.

The CLI agent feature is in public preview and requires an admin to enable Editor preview features for Copilot Business or Copilot Enterprise subscribers.

Agent tasks REST API

The same day, GitHub opened a REST API for programmatically triggering Copilot cloud agent tasks. The API is aimed at teams that want to wire agents into their own tooling rather than starting tasks by hand.

The documented use cases are things like fanning out a large refactor across many repositories, automating release note generation on a schedule, or triggering repository setup from an internal developer portal. The agent runs in the background in its own environment, makes code changes, and opens a pull request when done. You can poll the task endpoint to track progress.

The API supports authentication via personal access tokens (classic and fine-grained) and OAuth tokens. Support for GitHub App installation tokens and Copilot Pro/Pro+ is listed as coming soon. It’s currently in public preview for Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise users.

Both announcements are detailed in GitHub’s changelog. The JetBrains update is here and the REST API is here.