Tell HN: VS Code v1.117.0 automatically adds GitHub Copilot as your co author

Tell HN: VS Code v1.117.0 automatically adds GitHub Copilot as your co author

73 pointsby adithyassekhar34 comments

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  • Hacker News
  • Thanks for sharing. Time to go back to my emacs config from late 2010s…
  • If Copilot insists on being a co-author for suggesting a comma, I expect it to also take co-responsibility for the bugs it introduces and page itself when the production goes down at 2 AM.
  • PSA: You can disable it in the settings with the Git: add ai to Co author option
  • I have a rule for Claude to stop watermarking the commits. I feel exposed when it's doing it and I rewrote the entire Claude assisted commit history after switching from Copilot to Claude.
  • That's a great feature though. Vibecoded projects should be easily distinguishable, not only by common patterns preferred by "AI".
  • This is opt-out dark pattern territory. Git commits are a permanent record of authorship silently injecting a co-author trailer without explicit consent is a trust violation, regardless of intent.
  • The problem isn’t “AI in the workflow.” It’s AI claiming authorship by default.

    If I didn’t explicitly use Copilot for that commit, adding it as co-author is not assistance, it’s misattribution.

  • The thing is it doesn’t even say anywhere this is being done, I only realised it after a PR was raised.
  • Maybe this is some form of 'growth hacking'? I.e. they will use the increase in commits cowritten by Copilot as 'proof' that the AI hype is still alive?
  • This only happens on commits where autocomplete (via Copilot) was used, which I think is on by default.

    Still that doesn't seem very reasonable, LLM autocomplete seems like a basic editor feature nowadays.

    by bcye
  • Maybe you are right. I could have sworn this happened without me using autocomplete.
  • This is crazy, autocomplete changed one variable name for me and now I see:

    `Co-authored-by: Copilot <copilot@github.com>`

    That is not coauthorship. And if it were, every pre-commit tool that automatically reformats or fixes code should also append themselves as coauthors!

  • What a stupid annoying default setting! Here is how to turn it of in v1.117

    ```json // .vscode/settings.json { "git.addAICoAuthor": "off" } ```

  • Here's a more general command to turn off this and future annoyances. Works in Debian and other apt-based distributions.

       sudo apt autoremove --purge code
    
    It does have some side effects [1] but those are not as hard to deal with as whatever MS has done and will continue doing to your workflow.

    [1] disclaimer for those used to copy-pasting anything they find on the internet: sudo apt autoremove --purge <package> [<package> ...] removes software packages and their configuration files. Only use this if you know what you're doing.

  • UPDATE: It was the inline suggestions. If you use it to fill at least a character or word it will decide that it owns your code now.

    I accepted a typo fix in a changelog while correcting it. Appears as tab to autocomplete for those unaware. Still seems like a reach.

  • In for a penny, in for an arm and a leg. You can't use Microslop, Microslop uses you. That's the order of things.