DeskPilot

Author(s)

• Raimund Andree

Tags

Copilot GitHubCopilot ShellPilot Agent AI GUI AgenticOperatingModel Windows Linux macOS

Functions

Start-DeskPilot

PSEditions

Core

Dependencies

This module has no dependencies.

Release Notes

## [0.5.0-preview0013] - 2026-08-19

### Added

- **Automatic response retries.** A Turn no longer stops at the first transient
 Engine failure or successful-but-empty response before work has begun. The new
 **Response retries** Setting controls how many extra attempts DeskPilot makes
 after the first (`0–100`, default `2`), with each wait capped at five seconds;
 `0` turns the behavior off, and Stop remains responsive during the wait.
 Retries stop as soon as any answer or Tool Activity has appeared, so DeskPilot
 never repeats a command or write behind the user's back. The Setting also says
 plainly that failed attempts can still consume time and Copilot credits, and
 the final token and cost Usage includes every attempt the Engine recorded
 rather than only the successful one.

- **MCP servers.** DeskPilot can now attach Model Context Protocol servers, so
 the agent gains tools from programs you choose — an issue tracker, a database,
 a document store — beside its own. A new **MCP servers** tab in Settings takes
 either a command DeskPilot runs or the path to an `mcp.json` you already keep
 for another editor (both the VS Code `servers` and the Claude `mcpServers`
 shapes are read). Each server reports what it is actually doing: whether it is
 running, which protocol version it negotiated, and exactly which tools it
 contributes. Nothing is ever discovered on its own — a file that can start a
 program has to be named by you — and a server's tools appear in the Activity
 panel as they are called, marked apart from DeskPilot's own so you can always
 tell whose code just ran.

 Three deliberate limits, because an MCP server is somebody else's program
 running with your privileges. **Secrets are never stored:** a server that needs
 a token names the environment variable, and DeskPilot reads the value from its
 own environment when it starts the server, so a settings backup cannot leak a
 key. **Reach can be narrowed:** *Only offer these tools* attaches a server for
 the two tools you want and keeps the rest away from the agent entirely. And a
 new **MCP servers** permission withholds every attached server's tools for a
 job without stopping the servers — while the panel states plainly that the
 other permissions limit DeskPilot's own tools and do not limit an attached
 server, which can bring file and shell tools of its own.

 Requires ShellPilot 0.4.0-preview0007 or later; on an older engine the panel
 says so and everything else works as before.

- **You can now watch the agent work.** The Activity panel only ever appeared
 once a job had finished, as an unordered list of what it had touched — so while
 the agent was working, the window said nothing beyond a spinner unless *Show
 the model's thinking* was on, and the only files it named live were the ones it
 wrote. Every tool the agent uses now appears in the panel the moment it is used,
 in order: the files it reads and writes, the folders it lists, the commands it
 runs, the **pages it fetches**, the searches it makes. A run of the same kind of
 action folds into one line — *Read 6 files*, *Fetched 2 pages* — which is open
 while the job runs and closed when it ends, leaving the whole panel as a single
 line the reader can open again. The account is kept with the message, so it
 survives a reload, and a job that was stopped or ran out of its step budget now
 keeps it too — those never receive a result, so until now they showed no
 activity at all. A fetched page is also finally named by its address rather than
 by the raw instruction that requested it.

- **One way to throw away a whole review.** Reviewing a set of changed files
 offered exactly one decision — *Undo this file* — so putting a whole change set
 back meant walking every file and undoing each one. The review footer now
 carries **Discard all changes**, which puts every file listed in the review
 back the way it was at the last save and deletes the files that were never
 saved. It appears only when there is more than one file to discard, sits at the
 opposite end of the footer from **Close** so a mis-click cannot reach it, and
 always asks first — naming how many files it is about to take, listing them,
 and saying plainly that it cannot be undone.