Allow unlimited (or higher) prompt history via `commandHistoryMaxSize`
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Assessment
- Difficulty
- 2/5
- Estimated time
- 1-3 hours
- Newbie friendliness
- 62/100
Research direction
The payload names no source files, so start by finding where commandHistoryMaxSize is read from the configuration file and where it is clamped to 1,000. Check the history trimming logic that drops older prompts, and confirm how Ctrl+R and Up/Down read the stored list. Done means a value of 0 keeps all prompts, or the upper bound is raised, with a test covering the new behaviour.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Description
Describe the feature or problem you'd like to solve
Copilot CLI keeps only the last 50 prompts for Ctrl+R and Up/Down history by default. The commandHistoryMaxSize setting can raise this, but only to 1,000 (docs). Once the limit is reached, older prompts are permanently dropped. For heavy users, 1,000 prompts only covers a short period.
Proposed solution
Raise the maximum allowed value for commandHistoryMaxSize, or support an unlimited option (for example, 0), so users can retain their full prompt history.
Example prompts or workflows
- Set
"commandHistoryMaxSize": 0in~/.copilot/config.jsonto keep all prompts indefinitely. - Use Ctrl+R to find a prompt written weeks or months ago.
- Recall long, carefully crafted prompts without rewriting them.
Additional context
Requested by an enterprise customer. Other agentic CLIs (e.g. Claude Code) don't impose a comparable cap on prompt history.
- Dominant language
- Shell
- Stars
- 11.3k
- Forks
- 2k
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Getting set up
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First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
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