In this community post, matt_o_matic shares their experience of unexpectedly being rate limited by GitHub Copilot in VSCode while using a single chat thread for complex project scaffolding.

Being Rate Limited on VSCode on a Single Chat Thread

Author: matt_o_matic

Overview

The author describes an experience of being rate limited by GitHub Copilot while working in Visual Studio Code (VSCode). The rate limiting occurred even though they were operating within a single chat thread and focusing on the initial scaffolding of a sophisticated application. They note that the operations performed were relatively large, but they did not expect to hit API rate limits under these circumstances.

Details

  • Context: Author is a Copilot Pro+ user since the feature’s release.
  • Workflow: Used Copilot’s chat in a single VSCode window, not switching between multiple projects.
  • Intended Usage: Involved asking Copilot to generate or scaffold the core of a comprehensive application, likely requiring several large requests.
  • Issue Encountered: Hit an API rate limit despite minimal overall usage for the current billing cycle (2.5% of the premium quota used, and only the third day of the month).
  • Expectation: The author expected protections against excessive premium requests, but not API-level rate limiting in such a scenario—especially given usage patterns and subscription tier.

Observations

  • First instance of this issue after extensive history with Copilot Pro+.
  • No evidence of attempted abuse or using Copilot across multiple projects simultaneously.

Unanswered Questions

  • Is this typical? Are the limits for single-threaded chat lower than expected?
  • Could there be transient backend changes or updates affecting rate limit policies?
  • Is it possible to avoid such rate limiting under normal, single-project workflows?

Original Reddit thread: Being rate limited on VSCode on a single chat thread

This post appeared first on “Reddit Github Copilot”. Read the entire article here