Copilot Cloud Agent

Copilot Cloud Agent — Default Parallel Strategy

Why cloud-first

Git-worktree parallel workers are powerful but pay a heavy local cost: compute, disk, cognitive overhead, and correlation of state between branches. GitHub Copilot Cloud Agent inverts this tradeoff — issues are dispatched to GitHub's infrastructure, each one opens a PR, and the loop closes via PR review. The machine coordinating the work does no heavy lifting.

This skill is the default path for Phase 6 implementation work. Local parallel-workers is reserved for tasks that genuinely need local environment access.

Contract

Inputs

• spec_slug — the feature slug under .specify/specs/<slug>/
• tasks_filter (optional) — only dispatch tasks with specific IDs or parallelization_hint: copilot_cloud_agent

Outputs

• .project/issue-mapping.yml — TASK-NNN → issue number + PR number
• Issues on the repo, assigned to @copilot, labeled sdlc:phase-6, type:task, complexity:<level>
• PRs authored by Copilot, each targeting the current feature branch
• Loki logs with the metrics listed above

Invariants

1. No task dispatched without a context bundle. Each TASK-NNN has a .specify/specs/<slug>/tasks/TASK-NNN-*.md (story-context document). The issue body IS that document — verbatim. Paraphrasing breaks Principle IX.
2. No PR merged automatically. Human review + code-reviewer agent review are both required. Auto-merge is opt-in per repo policy.
3. No task dispatched with parallelization_hint: human_only. Those bypass this skill entirely and go through GitHub project board.
4. No secrets in task bodies or comments. The dispatcher scans for patterns matching *_KEY|*_SECRET|*_TOKEN|*_PASSWORD and blocks.

Phase 6 workflow with this skill

delivery-planner (/tasks)
  → produces .specify/specs/<slug>/tasks/TASK-NNN-*.md
  → produces .specify/specs/<slug>/strategy.yml

/phase-6-start
  → copilot-cloud-agent.dispatcher.py
  → for each TASK with parallelization_hint == copilot_cloud_agent:
      create issue with TASK-NNN-*.md as body
      assign @copilot
      record in .project/issue-mapping.yml
  → parallel-workers handles parallelization_hint == local_worker (fallback)
  → human_only tasks routed to GitHub project board

copilot (GitHub Cloud)
  → opens draft PR on branch copilot/<issue-number>-<slug>
  → runs CI

copilot-cloud-agent.status_tracker.py (periodic)
  → polls get_copilot_job_status
  → watches PR CI signals

copilot-cloud-agent.review_relay.py (on PR ready)
  → invokes code-reviewer agent on the PR diff
  → invokes security-scanner (SAST/SCA)
  → if issues found: @copilot is replied with structured feedback
  → if clean: request human review (gate: Principle VII)

human + code-reviewer approval
  → PR merges into feature branch
  → issue closes
  → .project/issue-mapping.yml updated

phase-6-to-7 gate
  → gate-evaluator checks all issues closed, all PRs merged
  → proceeds to Phase 7 (Quality)

Issue body template

Issues created by this skill carry a disciplined shape so Copilot has the context it needs.

<!-- Generated by copilot-cloud-agent — do not edit the header -->

## Task

<one-sentence imperative>

## Acceptance criteria

<verbatim from story-context.md>

## Context bundle

<verbatim Files, ADRs, Patterns, Anti-patterns, Data, Security sections>

## Test plan

<verbatim from story-context.md>

## Out of scope

<verbatim>

## Definition of done

<verbatim>

---
**spec**: `.specify/specs/<slug>/spec.md`
**plan**: `.specify/specs/<slug>/plan.md`
**task**: `.specify/specs/<slug>/tasks/TASK-NNN-*.md`
**constitution**: v1.0.0 — Principles II, III, IV, VII apply

Review relay protocol

When Copilot opens a PR, this skill runs review_relay.py which:

1. Fetches the PR diff via pull_request_read.
2. Invokes code-reviewer (local agent) with the diff + the TASK context.
3. Invokes security-scanner (SAST + SCA).
4. Aggregates findings by severity:
   • CRITICAL / HIGH → post structured comment via add_comment_to_pending_review, tag @copilot in the body so the cloud agent sees it and retries.
   • MEDIUM → post as review comment, do not tag.
   • LOW → post as threaded comment.
5. If CRITICAL/HIGH, the PR is NOT marked ready for human review. Copilot retries. A retry counter is incremented in issue-mapping.yml.
6. Cap at 3 automated retries. On the 4th rejection, escalate to human and unassign Copilot.

Metrics promoted to SLOs

Burn rate alerts fire via observability-engineer Grafana dashboard.

Pre-flight checks (dispatcher)

Before any issue is created, the dispatcher verifies:

1. gh auth status succeeds
2. Target repo has Copilot coding agent enabled: gh api repos/OWNER/REPO --jq '.allow_copilot_coding_agent' → true
3. The feature branch exists on origin
4. .specify/specs/<slug>/strategy.yml designates copilot_cloud_agent as primary for these tasks
5. Each TASK-NNN file passes secret scan
6. Daily dispatch quota not exceeded (budget-bound)

A failure in any of these blocks dispatch with a specific remediation.

When NOT to use this skill

• Task requires local-only credentials or infra access → use parallel-workers (worktrees)
• Task is Level 0 (bug fix, typo) → use /quick-fix directly
• Task is exploratory / spike / research → assign to human
• Task touches the Constitution or a framework meta-file → human only

Failure handling (resilience hooks)

The dispatcher wraps every MCP call with the resilience layer (.claude/lib/python/resilience.py):

• 3 retries with exponential backoff on 5xx
• 15s timeout per call
• Circuit-breaker opens at 50% error rate across 10 calls
• On open circuit: pause dispatch, alert, fall back to parallel-workers

References

• GitHub Copilot coding agent: https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/use-copilot-agents/cloud-agent
• Existing command: .claude/commands/sdlc-create-issues.md
• Companion script: .claude/skills/copilot-cloud-agent/scripts/dispatcher.py
• Constitution: .specify/memory/constitution.md (Principle X)
• ADR to be authored: "Copilot Cloud Agent as default Phase 6 strategy"