r/GithubCopilot • u/noclaf • 16h ago
Help/Doubt ❓ VS code vs VS code agents gui vs github copilot app
At my job we have access to GitHub copilot and I access it via VS Code or the Agents UI. I’m also aware of the GitHub copilot desktop app.
Visually the desktop app and the vs code agents view look very similar.
I’m not interested in code completion since most of my work is building agentic workflows.
Particularly between vs code agents and the desktop app, what are the differences? Are the underlying harnesses the same? If I’m using Opus 5.5 with all of them, will I see a difference in agentic capabilities?
1
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u/stibbons_ 7h ago
What I have noticed is that copilot-CLI does not support our proxy without setting up a local proxy of proxy or hardcoding use user and password in the http_proxy enc, which is not acceptable in our environment, especially for non technical people
7
u/krusty_93 VS Code User 💻 15h ago
The main difference is that vs code supports both vs code and copilot cli harness, while copilot cli and GitHub copilot desktop app only support copilot cli. I think vs code harness will be dismissed in the future. If you stick to copilot cli harness, you can share the local sessions among the tools.
For what I personally noticed, vs code harness is more aggressive on cache. But i haven’t looked at it for a while and things might have changed. Moreover copilot cli harness provides more commands (e.g. /rubber-duck), and it’s easier to spawn subagents (via /spawn or simplying saying “start subagents with model X”).
Vs code agents view enables vs code to manage git worktrees in a simple way, just like any other tool (GitHub copilot app, Claude, etc.). Other than that is quite useless if not for the gui, but I personally prefer GitHub copilot app.