Building guardrails for GitHub Copilot cloud agent

Configure your enterprise so that Copilot Cloudagent will operate in a secure, compliant environment.

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Before you enable Copilot Cloudagent, it is good practice to set up your enterprise so you can be confident Copilot will operate within secure, predictable guardrails.

Learn about built-in protections

Copilot Cloudagent has a strong base of built-in security protections designed to protect against common risk points of AI agents. See Risiken und Risikominderungen für GitHub Copilot Cloud-Agent.

Plan policy settings

Plan your policies for Copilot Cloudagent in advance. Policies allow you to set a baseline for restrictions at the enterprise level, which organization owners can restrict further if needed.

Some questions to ask are:

Which policies don't apply?

The following Copilot policies don't apply to Copilot Cloudagent:

  • Content exclusions
  • Custom models (providing your own LLM API keys)
  • Private MCP registries

Adapt rulesets

Copilot Cloudagent is already restricted from actions like pushing to a default branch or merging pull requests. You can build on these default protections in branch rulesets. Copilot Cloudagent is subject to rulesets just like human developers.

To adapt your rulesets for Copilot Cloudagent:

  • Consider whether additional rules are required in repositories where agents will operate, such as requiring results from code scanning or Code Quality. If you have identified the organizations or repositories where Copilot Cloudagent will be enabled, you can apply a custom property to them so they're easy to target in a ruleset.
  • Consider whether Copilot Cloudagent will be blocked by any of your existing rulesets. Copilot can sign its commits, but it may not be able to follow other rules that restrict commit metadata.
  • Protect important Copilot and MCP configuration files with a CODEOWNERS file, and enable the "Require review from Code Owners" rule, so that edits to these files must be approved by specific teams. For filepaths to target, see Copilot Spickzettel zur Anpassung.

Set up your GitHub Actions environment

Copilot Cloudagent operates on GitHub Actions runners. Set up your runners and policies so that Copilot operates securely.

Store data and secrets

Continue to store data and tokens that you don't want Copilot to access as GitHub Actions variables or secrets. Copilot won't be able to access these in its sessions or environment setup steps.

If you need to provide data and secrets that Copilot Cloudagent does need, you'll be able to do this in a specific copilot environment.

Configure runners

Decide which runners you will use for Copilot Cloudagent. We recommend using GitHub-hosted runners, so that each Copilot Cloudagent runs on a fresh virtual machine. If you use self-hosted runners, we recommend using ephemeral runners.

Organization owners can restrict the Copilot Cloudagent's runners to a specific runner label, to be used automatically in all repositories. See Konfigurieren von Runnern für den GitHub Copilot Cloud-Agent in Ihrer Organisation.

Configure workflow policies

Decide whether GitHub Actions workflows should be blocked from running in pull requests that Copilot Cloudagent creates. See Konfigurieren von Einstellungen für GitHub Copilot Cloud-Agent.

By default, workflows are blocked from running until someone with write access approves them. Repository administrators will be able to disable this feature, so communicate with them in advance about your preferred setting.

Review default permissions

Review the default permissions for the GITHUB_TOKEN in your enterprise. See Erzwingen von Richtlinien für GitHub Actions in Ihrem Unternehmen.

This policy does not affect the token that Copilot will receive for its sessions, but the GITHUB_TOKEN is used in environment setup steps defined in copilot-setup-steps.yml workflow files.

Bear in mind that developers will be able to set their own permissions in these workflow files, and you should encourage them to use the minimum required permissions in all workflows.

Next steps

When you're ready to enable Copilot Cloudagent, see Das Verwalten von GitHub Copilot Cloud-Agenten in Ihrem Unternehmen.