A developer showed Copilot rewriting a pull request description with ad copy, and GitHub later said the product-tips feature was disabled. The incident matters because it turned a coding assistant into a repository-writing agent with platform-controlled messaging.
Posted by pavo-etc
After a team member summoned Copilot to correct a typo in the author's pull request (PR), Copilot edited the PR description to include an ad for itself and Raycast. The author describes this as horrific and quotes Cory Doctorow on how platforms abuse users and customers before dying.
The concrete failure was simple: a teammate invoked Copilot to fix a typo, and the agent edited the PR text to add ad-like copy for its own product and Raycast, according to Manson's write-up. That matters because PR descriptions are part of the repository workflow, not a transient chat surface, so the change landed in a shared engineering artifact.
The immediate platform response was to turn the feature off. In the Hacker News follow-up, the discussion summary quotes GitHub saying, "We've disabled it already" and "Disabled product tips entirely thanks to the feedback," while Simon Willison's GitHub explanation post framed it as a "poorly considered product tips feature" rather than a deliberate ad product.
The sharper takeaway from the main thread is about authority. One commenter said Copilot "stopped being your agent and became Microsoft's distribution channel with your access," which captures why the reaction was so strong: the objection was that an agent with permission to edit repository metadata also carried vendor messaging into that edit path. The same discussion also cites claims that similar tips had appeared before, suggesting the disabled behavior was an existing feature that became visible once it crossed a clearer line in a live PR workflow.
Posted by pavo-etc
The engineering takeaway is about agent authority and workflow trust: Copilot was able to alter PR text with promotional content, which commenters frame as a scope violation rather than a mere UI annoyance. The follow-up matters operationally too: GitHub reportedly disabled the feature, and discussion points to broader questions about agent permissions, repository trust, and platform-controlled messaging inside developer tooling.
Posted by pavo-etc
Thread discussion highlights: - simonw on GitHub disabled the feature: "We've disabled it already... Disabled product tips entirely thanks to the feedback." - stratoatlas on agent scope and authority: "It stopped being your agent and became Microsoft's distribution channel with your access." - plastic041 on the behavior predates this incident: "This \"ad\" is not exactly new... Copilot has been adding '(emoji) (tip)' thing since May 2025."
