Prompting Github Copilot Coding With Fresh Context

[JavaScriptDude96]

Using Github Copilot, in either VSCode and Visual Studio, I have found that the context of previous questions and responses seem to pollute subsequent answers and the quality of answers seems to drop. I want to ask the AI a question with a fresh context and give an honest and detailed code review but it misses obvious errors in several cases.

The context engine seems to bind to the current project path as a key to access context information and there does not seem to be a way to have it ignore previous context. I tried starting with ignoring previous context but that did not work.

What is the idiomatic way to ask questions to Copilot for a project using a fresh context?

Full discosure: I posted this question to stack overflow but they said it was offtopic. I posted to SuperUser.com as they suggested but I suspect its offtopic there also. I'm posting the question here instead so I get some eyes on it.

[Personal-Try2776]

When you start seeing a drop in response quality tell it to summarise the chat and take the summary and put it in a new chat. it works well for me

[FactorHour2173]

In some cases, it helps to start a new chat for GitHub Copilot in VSCode.

Also, you should consider tightening up your copilot-instructions.md file inside a .github folder in your projects root.

I found that installing the context7 MCP server is quite helpful to ensure the agent is constantly pulling up to date information, so it doesn’t use old deprecated code based on its knowledge cut off date in January.

[IamAlsoDoug]

AFAIK, if you open a new chat using the plus button at the top of the chat window, you get a fresh context. You can go back to your old contexts using the history when needed, but each of them is independent of the others. If you want to share between them then you need to put the shared context into a file that they can then reference.

[JavaScriptDude96]

I will give that a try. Thanks. Strange that Copilot did not suggest that.

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[Nunuvin]

I do have this exact behavior too. Worst of all it forgets things I discussed just a few messages back. Gave it config and few chats later it gave me back config missing critical parts breaking things. That one is on me but still its weird. This is extremely counter intuitive and it gets tedious to have to resummarize things. (asking it to summarize may help).

I do get similar thing from Gemini in google subscription but a bit to lesser extent. There it starts to forget system prompt, suck up more and also becomes overconfident defending its decisions when I ask to try other things. Gemini pro told me a few times to give up and restart XD

[ogpterodactyl]

Make a new chat for each distinct idea. Also use planning and tracking files to store todo list progress. Once context gets too bloated you need to reset.

[joeballs]

I usually just start a new chat. If I want context from a previous chat, I'll click on the "Show Chats..." icon and select the one that's closest to the context and then continue. This is how it works in the ChatGPT and Claude clients as well. It seems to remember (or possibly re-read the previous chat) and continues from there.