Copilot Coding Agent keeps failing with 'unable to start' error

[deb-sahu]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Copilot in GitHub

Body

Everytime an issue is assigned to copilot coding agent using the GitHub API (https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/use-copilot-agents/coding-agent/create-a-pr#assigning-an-issue-to-copilot-via-the-github-api) - it fails with the following error - The agent encountered an error and was unable to start working on this issue: Please try again later, or contact support if the problem persists. (Request id: A80A:206F7E:D88BD90:DC9B9F1:69D295F5)

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[MakiBuu]

Hmm, that looks like one of those generic Copilot agent failures rather than something obviously wrong in your request. I’d double-check that the repo has the coding agent enabled and that the API call is formatted exactly as expected, but if all that looks fine it might just be a transient backend issue. Since you’ve got a request ID, your best bet is probably to reach out to GitHub support with it so they can trace what actually failed on their side.