GitHub Copilot SDK as a dependency free core library.

[martasp]

Currently, the Copilot SDK for .NET (and other languages) requires a separate Copilot CLI executable to be installed and run as a server process. This approach feels like a distribution/wrapper, as every SDK user has to manage and maintain a separate executable binary or install cli manually. This adds installation friction and increases system complexity if you want to extend and build some functionality on top.

It would be a significant improvement to offer a single statically linked library instead of github copilot cli executable, directly embedding all CLI functionality. This would:

• Eliminate the need to download/install/call out to external binaries or use jsonRPC server layer.
• Make integration cleaner for .NET apps by providing a GitHub Copilot NuGet package. This would mean just interop calls with the library using [LibraryImport].

The Copilot SDK readme claims "Agents for every app." However, the following use cases contradict this:

• How to produce a real-world consumer Windows application with GitHub Copilot SDK if the user needs to be installed copilot cli as a dependency?
• How to ship the server api with GitHub Copilot SDK if the user needs to be installed copilot cli executable as a dependency?
• How to ship the client-side Blazor app with GitHub Copilot SDK if the user needs to be installed copilot cli executable as a dependency?

Unfortunately, GitHub Copilot CLI is not open-sourced, so we don't know if they can provide a clean, statically linked library.

[github-actions]

Thank you for opening this issue, @martasp!

I've labeled this as an enhancement and sdk/dotnet since you're proposing a significant architectural improvement to remove the CLI dependency and provide a self-contained library.

Your use cases (Windows apps, server APIs, and Blazor apps) clearly highlight the distribution challenges with the current architecture. This is valuable feedback about making the SDK truly embeddable for production applications.

The team will review this proposal. While the Copilot CLI isn't open-source, your request for a statically-linked library or alternative approach is understood.

AI generated by Issue Triage Agent

[friggeri]

Thanks for the feedback, we're aware of this and @SteveSandersonMS will be spending some time on cleaning up our packaging/bundling story.