GitHub Copilot Is Merging Its Chat Surfaces and Changing Its Billing Defaults in September

GitHub announced three significant Copilot changes on August 28, all set to take effect by September 28. If you run a team on Copilot, at least two of them need attention before the deadline.

One Chat Experience Instead of Three

Copilot Chat on github.com, GitHub Mobile, and the Copilot cloud agent are being merged into a single unified interface. Right now each surface operates independently. After the September 28 launch, they’ll share context and history.

The more consequential change comes with data retention. Chat history has been kept for 28 days across these surfaces. After the merge, retention extends to the life of the account, matching how the cloud agent already works.

Users need to actively opt in to keep access. Anyone who doesn’t opt in before the launch date loses access to these features once the unified experience goes live.

Billing Changes for Business and Enterprise

GitHub is reopening signups for Business and Enterprise plans, which had been paused. New customers can register again, though with stricter requirements than before.

Starting October 1, existing customers paying by credit card or PayPal will face upfront seat charges rather than paying at the end of a billing cycle. Seat prices aren’t changing. Revoking a seat won’t trigger a refund until the next billing cycle.

GitHub also clarified that exceeding included usage may require additional payment to maintain access. The exact thresholds depend on plan type.

Code Review Default Moves to Balanced

Copilot’s automated code review effort level defaults to Lite today. On September 28, the default switches to Balanced.

Balanced costs more tokens per review than Lite. Teams that want to stay on Lite need to explicitly select it before the switch happens. Otherwise reviews will automatically run at the higher effort level starting September 28.

What Else Shipped in August

The August Visual Studio update, also released on August 28, added several notable features that are available now:

Organization-level custom agents let organization and enterprise owners publish shared agents across all repositories. Visual Studio detects and surfaces these automatically in the agent picker.

Thinking effort controls give users explicit Low, Medium, and High reasoning settings per request, letting developers trade depth for cost on less complex tasks.

Model management got a dedicated view showing each model’s capabilities, context window size, cost, and custom controls. Users can pin favorites and hide models they don’t use.

Git agent code review lets the built-in Git agent review uncommitted changes and individual commits before a pull request is opened. Findings appear inline in the editor and in a navigable list in the Git Changes panel.

All of these August VS features are available now across all Copilot plan tiers: Free, Pro, Pro+, Max, Business, and Enterprise.

The September changes require action from administrators before the deadline. The key items: opt users in to the unified chat experience, review billing configuration ahead of October 1, and decide whether to lock code reviews to Lite before the default shifts.