Allow exclusion of folder from Github Copilot (completely)

[dommueller]

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I'm quite concerned with the data privacy of Copilot.

There's no clear documentation what Copilot has access to and uses as reference? It also seems there is no option to disable specific files or folders. I'm aware of context exclusion. However, it is limited to organisation/enterprise level and it also does not effect the chat. Currently, one must assume that any file inside the workspace might be used as reference and forwarded to Copilot. Git has the concept of .gitignore why isn't there something similar? Am I missing something super obvious? This seems like a data privacy nightmare.

[nickkipshidze]

This might be interesting for you: https://resources.github.com/copilot-trust-center/
Tell me what you think and if it helped.

[dommueller]

Hey, thank you for the resource. However, all I could find is:

Prompts used to generate a suggestion may include various elements of the context, including file content both in the file you are editing, as well as neighboring or related files within a project.

Which is very vague what files are included and especially no option to exclude specific files or folders. I don't see a reason why I'm not able to tell Copilot not to consider .env files or data folders as reference.

The code exclusion is basically what I want. But why does it only exist remotely and is not a local configuration in the editors? And why does it not affect Copilot Chat?

[mrosata]

I agree with this 100%. Another concern is that because Copilot includes all open tabs for context, it may actually include open tabs from multiple projects at the same time. This is my experience in JetBrains anyways. The trust center literature states

Prompts used to generate a suggestion may include various elements of the context, including file content both in the file you are editing, as well as neighboring or related files within a project

but I've seen dotenv variable names from an .env file open in a separate WebStorm project appear as Copilot suggestions. This may be due to the mechanism Copilot uses to build context from WebStorm.

I believe at a minimum there should be a .copilotignore file and in an ideal world, a .copilotrc config file that can be automatically loaded or preset as plugin preferences.

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[KostyaDrazdovich]

Any replies or updates about ignoring config files?

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