copilot-setup-steps.yml: set up the GitHub Copilot cloud (coding) agent environment

• Path: .github/workflows/copilot-setup-steps.yml
• It must contain one job named copilot-setup-steps, or Copilot ignores it.
• It only triggers once it is on your default branch.
• Only these job keys are honored: steps, permissions, runs-on, services, snapshot, timeout-minutes.
• timeout-minutes max is 59.
• If a step exits non-zero, Copilot skips the remaining steps and starts work anyway.

name: "Copilot Setup Steps"

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  push:
    paths:
      - .github/workflows/copilot-setup-steps.yml
  pull_request:
    paths:
      - .github/workflows/copilot-setup-steps.yml

jobs:
  copilot-setup-steps:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: read
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v6

      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v7
        with:
          node-version: "20"
          cache: "npm"

      - name: Install JavaScript dependencies
        run: npm ci

Keep permissions minimal. Copilot gets its own token. If you skip checkout, Copilot clones the repo after your steps. Any fetch-depth you set on actions/checkout is overridden.

The file runs as a normal Actions workflow when it changes, so it shows as a check on the pull request. After merging, run it manually from the repository Actions tab.

jobs:
  copilot-setup-steps:
    runs-on: ubuntu-4-core

• Only Ubuntu x64 and Windows 64-bit runners are supported. macOS is not.
• For self-hosted runners, GitHub recommends ephemeral single-use runners (for example ARC), and you must disable the Copilot integrated firewall in repository settings.
• For Windows, use self-hosted or larger runners with Azure private networking, since the integrated firewall does not support Windows.

jobs:
  copilot-setup-steps:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: read
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
        with:
          lfs: true

Copilot code review reuses this file by default. You can create copilot-code-review.yml to configure the review environment separately.