Organization runner controls for Copilot cloud agent

Source: GitHub Changelog

New organization runner controls for Copilot cloud agent

Each time the Copilot cloud agent works on a task, it starts a new development environment powered by GitHub Actions.

By default, this runs on a standard GitHub‑hosted runner, but teams can also customize the agent environment to use large runners or self‑hosted runners for faster performance, access to internal resources, and more.

Until now, the runner was configured at the repository level with a copilot-setup-steps.yml file, making it difficult to roll out consistent defaults or enforce guardrails across an organization.

Organization admin capabilities

• Set a default runner to be used automatically across all repositories, without requiring each repository to be individually configured.
• Lock the runner setting so individual repositories can’t override the organization default.

These controls let you:

• Define sensible defaults for your teams (e.g., using larger GitHub Actions runners for better performance).
• Ensure the agent always runs where you want it to, such as on your self‑hosted runners.

To learn more, see Configuring runners for GitHub Copilot cloud agent in your organization in the GitHub Docs.