web_search tool missing in Copilot app 1.1.6 — agent falls back to curl/Bing/DuckDuckGo guessing

[ArlindNocaj]

Summary

The web_search tool appears to be missing/unavailable in the GitHub Copilot app (version 1.1.6). Instead of using the web_search tool, the agent falls back to guessing at web searches via shell commands — attempting curl against Bing, DuckDuckGo, and other search endpoints.

The same web_search tool still works correctly in GitHub Copilot CLI, so this appears to be specific to the app.

Version

• GitHub Copilot app: 1.1.6

Steps to reproduce

1. Open GitHub Copilot app (v1.1.6)
2. Ask a question that requires up-to-date information from the web (e.g. "what's the latest release of X?")
3. Observe the agent's tool usage

Expected behavior

The agent invokes the web_search tool to retrieve web results, as it does in GitHub Copilot CLI.

Actual behavior

web_search is not available. The agent instead attempts to improvise web search by shelling out with curl to search engines such as Bing and DuckDuckGo. These fallbacks are unreliable and generally return unusable results (bot protection, JS-rendered pages, rate limiting).

Impact

• Web-dependent questions return poor or no results
• Wasted tool calls / tokens on failed curl attempts
• Behavioral inconsistency between the app and the CLI for the same underlying agent

Additional context

web_search continues to function as expected in GitHub Copilot CLI, which suggests the tool is simply not being registered/exposed in the app build.