Content & Suggestion Controls

Content exclusion

Official documentation

• Excluding content from GitHub Copilot
• Supported surfaces for Copilot policies

• Prevents specified files/paths from being used as Copilot context (fnmatch-style patterns, e.g. *.cfg, /scripts/**).
• Configurable at repo level (and org/enterprise scope for broader reach).
• Critical limitation to flag in training: Agent mode in Copilot Chat (IDEs) does not honor content exclusion. Third-party coding agents and Spark also don’t support it. Copilot CLI does honor content exclusion — don’t assume it’s an exception.

Suggestions matching public code

Official documentation

• Code suggestions
• Finding matching public code

• Org/enterprise policy: Block (suppress ~150+ char matches to public code) vs Allow (show with code-reference/license transparency).
• One of the “most-restrictive-wins” policies across multi-org licensing — org-level setting overrides individual user preference when managed.