Question

A developer at a company using Copilot Business reports that when they open `config/prod-secrets.yaml`, which is covered by a repository content exclusion rule, they receive no inline code completions in that file. However, they are surprised that when they manually paste a snippet from that same file into the Copilot Chat panel and ask Copilot to explain it, they still get a response. Which statement best explains this behavior?

Accepted Answer

Content exclusions prevent Copilot from using the excluded file's content as context and disable completions in it, but they cannot stop a user from manually pasting text into a chat prompt, which Copilot then processes as ordinary user input.

Answer

Content exclusions are broken for this repository; both completions and chat should be fully blocked, and an administrator must re-sync the exclusion policy to fix the chat leak.

Answer

Chat is exempt from content exclusions only on Copilot Business, so upgrading to Copilot Enterprise would automatically block the pasted snippet from being processed.

Answer

Copilot detected that the pasted text originated from an excluded file via a content fingerprint and intentionally allowed the explanation because explanations are considered read-only operations.