GitHub Copilot Weekly Releases — August 24: CLI Goes Native Rust, Slack/Teams Agents

GitHub shipped the biggest weekly Copilot update this year. Here's what changed across every surface.

CLI rewritten in Rust. The Copilot CLI now runs on a native Rust runtime with the terminal interface in TypeScript. Significantly faster, session recovery for interrupted turns, and new /plugin, /mcp, and /skills management commands. Also: defaultMode and defaultPermissionMode for session entry points.

Shared agents in Slack and Teams. Mention @GitHub in a channel and the whole team can investigate, plan, and make changes together in a shared agent session. This turns collaboration into a Copilot surface — not just individual chat.

Customize tab GA. The Customize tab is out of preview, bundling MCP servers, plugins, skills, and canvases in one place. Azure DevOps issues and PRs can now be brought into Copilot sessions directly.

VS Code 1.135. Continue agent sessions from other apps in VS Code. Get a second opinion from a complementary model to catch missed details. New single-pane Agents layout with simpler session controls. Per-model usage tracking for every chat turn.

Visual Studio. Organization-level custom agents, thinking effort controls (Low/Medium/High), Git agent for pre-PR change review, and pinned model favorites.

JetBrains. Enterprise controls for plugins, MCP servers, telemetry, and agent permission modes.

This is the release cadence of a platform that's getting serious about being the agent OS. Rust CLI, shared sessions, per-organization agents — each one removes a friction point that kept Copilot in "helper" territory.