Skip to content

BYOK: Support multiple external models/providers #4976

Description

@MLgentDev

Describe the feature or problem you'd like to solve

The GitHub Copilot app supports configuring multiple external models/providers, while Copilot CLI currently supports only a single BYOK provider/model configuration.

Proposed solution

Extend the current configuration:
COPILOT_PROVIDER_BASE_URL
COPILOT_PROVIDER_API_KEY
COPILOT_MODEL
to support multiple provider/model profiles and allow switching between them.
The goal is to make Copilot CLI usable as a single agent harness across multiple model providers.

Example prompts or workflows

No response

Additional context

Some organizations require model/provider independence and therefore prefer a model-agnostic harness rather than provider-specific tools such as Codex or Claude Code.

Copilot CLI is a strong candidate for this role and competes with multi-provider tools such as OpenCode. However, supporting multiple configured providers is important for organizations adopting Copilot CLI strategically.

In our case, this capability would help justify Copilot CLI as a long-term, provider-independent solution; without it, we would likely need to consider replacing it with a multi-provider alternative.

Activity

  1. added
    area:modelsModel selection, availability, switching, rate limits, and model-specific behavior
    and removed on Sep 30, 2026
  2. patniko commented on Oct 26, 2026

    @patniko
    Collaborator

    Thanks for the report. We've shipped fixes in this area since this was filed (most recently in Copilot CLI v1.0.100), and we believe this may now be resolved. Could you retest on the latest release (Copilot CLI v1.0.103) and let us know whether you still see it? If we don't hear back in a couple of weeks, we may close this issue — you can always reopen it.

    Triaged as part of a Copilot SDK backlog review, with help from GitHub Copilot.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    area:modelsModel selection, availability, switching, rate limits, and model-specific behaviormore-info-needed

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      No milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions