Native Web search support.

[fhemmerrelias]

Describe the feature or problem you'd like to solve

Like Claude Code, Copilot CLI should have the ability to natively determine if a web search is needed and then execute upon it.

Proposed solution

No response

Example prompts or workflows

No response

Additional context

No response

[SteveSandersonMS]

Good idea, thanks.

Since we don't yet have that feature built in, another short-term option is to use an MCP tool. For example https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP provides an endpoint https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP that you can configure as an MCP server - I just checked and it seems to work well.

Totally agree it would be nice for this to be built-in though!

[non-stop-dev]

Yeah, web search tool would be super useful. Thanks for the MCP

[jerabaul29]

+1 , this is a break or make feature - without web search, copilot is basically stuck at understanding the state of libraries / bugs to walk around / etc from the cutoff time of the training dataset. Without automatic web search copilot feels much "weaker" than for example Claude Code in my experience.

[jerabaul29]

Since we don't yet have that feature built in, another short-term option is to use an MCP tool. For example https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP provides an endpoint https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP that you can configure as an MCP server - I just checked and it seems to work well.

If this takes a bit of time to add in copilot "core", any way that copilot can ship with the MCP built in so this is working out of the box for "less techies" users who dont want to go through MCP setup?

[EvanBoyle]

This is on our near term roadmap, no exact dates to share yet but something that is under active investigation.

[jerabaul29]

I am going to need to choose between different Agentic coding CLI tools in the near future for a project and this is a make or break feature because it will depend on actively developed libraries / recent doc that is evolving fast. Any hint of when you expect this may land? If you are not able to provide a hint or it is expected too far in the future, I will unfortunately have to drop using github copilot CLI and use an alternative tool :( . Just saying this to illustrate user needs, as I think this is a typical case that shows up quite often :) .

[jerabaul29]

I recently updated copilot and it looks like it does plenty of web searches now - not sure if this is because of a built in feature, or if it is the model providers doing it, or some other mechanism, but as far as I see, this works in practice for my needs - maybe this issue can be closed :) .

[leofang]

It is quite shocking that the Copilot CLI can't even search GitHub's own issues and PRs. I would suggest to prioritize accessing GitHub's own resources, like what the web chat version can do. This would solve ~80% of the daily challenges that I've encountered so far.

[MRayermannMSFT]

Apologies, it looks like our work for this missed the release notes! As of 0.0.370, if GitHub MCP is connected, the model has a clearly named web_search tool:

> Can you search the web, and if so with what tool?

 ● Yes, I can search the web using the web_search tool. It performs an AI-powered web search that returns intelligent, contextual
   answers with citations.

   Best used for:

     - Recent events or frequently updated information
     - New developments, trends, or technologies
     - Extremely specific or niche subjects
     - When you explicitly request a web search
     - Getting current, factual information with verifiable sources

   Just ask me to search for something and I'll use it to find up-to-date information!

It is quite shocking that the Copilot CLI can't even search GitHub's own issues and PRs. I would suggest to prioritize accessing GitHub's own resources, like what the web chat version can do. This would solve ~80% of the daily challenges that I've encountered so far.

@leofang The agent should be able to do pretty well via the GitHub MCP (remote server is automatically used) and/or the gh CLI (assuming you've installed that). If you think there are gaps, please feel free to open an issue with some example use cases where you are finding the agent's behavior lacking.

[JoeRoddy]

@MRayermannMSFT maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but my github mcp server doesn't seem to have the web_search tool available. cli version 0.37.4

[MRayermannMSFT]

@JoeRoddy thanks for reaching out...that's definitely odd. Have you self configured the GitHub MCP server?

For example, if you do mcp /show what output do you get? I get:

 ● MCP Server Configuration:

   • playwright (local): Command: npx

   Total servers: 1
   Config file: /Users/matthew/.copilot/mcp-config.json

The important thing there is that GitHub MCP doens't show up, as I'm using the built in version of the server.

[JoeRoddy]

I don't think I self configured it? It seemed to be there immediately.

Before this, I did need to remove my copilot cli installation and reinstall to get the latest version though. Unsure if maybe there's something stale left over.

/mcp show output: