What do you do when Copilot stops doing anything and just repeats what it's going to do?

[MrYossu]

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I have found that when using the Copilot chat window in Visual Studio, Copilot will get on and do what I ask up to a point, but then it will stop. It sits there not doing anything.

If I ask it why, it gives a bland response like "Sorry, I stalled. Here's what I'm going to do now . I’ll apply the changes now and report back when the project builds."

It doesn't actually do anything, it just sits there. Asking it to continue does help, it just apologises, repeats the tasks left and tells me it's going to do them.

Out of interest, when it did this to me yesterday, I decided to give it a chance, and kept on asking it to do the tasks, but I couldn't find any way of getting any kind of response other than the one above. Even when it introduced a bug into the code and told me it was going to fix it (and sometimes claimed it had when it hadn't), it still didn't do anything.

What do you do in such a situation?

[ganapathijahnavi]

Hey, This behavior usually means Copilot Agent in Visual Studio has stalled internally (often due to a timeout, tool execution failure, or losing context), even though the chat UI keeps responding.
A few things you can try:

1. Stop and restart the chat session - Close the Copilot chat window and start a new session. Long sessions sometimes degrade.
2. Reload Visual Studio - Extensions can get into a stuck state.
3. Break the task into smaller steps - Large multi-step edits are more likely to stall.
4. Check Output / Logs - Look at View → Output → GitHub Copilot to see if there are errors.
5. Avoid relying on “I’ll apply the changes now” - Instead, explicitly ask it to generate the exact code diff or full replacement and apply it manually.
   When it says it’s applying changes but nothing happens, that usually means the tool execution step failed silently. The model responds, but the editor action didn’t trigger.
   If this is happening consistently, it’s likely a regression or extension issue rather than something you’re doing wrong. Updating to the latest version (or even reinstalling the extension) can sometimes fix it.

[MrYossu]

@ganapathijahnavi Thanks for the reply. I did look in the output window, but didn't see anything that looked like something had gone wrong.

You mentioned upgrading, however this is Copilot in VS. Isn't that built-in? I didn't think it was a separate extension that could be updated. I don't see it in my installed extensions.

Thanks again

[ganapathijahnavi]

You’re right. In recent versions of Visual Studio, Copilot is integrated more tightly and may not appear as a typical Marketplace extension.
However, it’s still versioned with Visual Studio itself. So updating Visual Studio (Help → Check for Updates) effectively updates Copilot as well.
If you’re already on the latest VS build and still seeing this:

1. Try Repair from the Visual Studio Installer.
2. Sign out and back into GitHub inside VS.
3. Disable and re-enable Copilot under Tools → Options → GitHub → Copilot (if available).
4. Try a clean restart after clearing the .vs hidden folder in your solution directory.
   If nothing shows in Output and it consistently stalls, it does sound more like a regression in the integrated agent behavior rather than a local config issue.