Background sub-agents (general-purpose) get stuck indefinitely, never complete

[rameshreddy-adutla]

Description

Background sub-agents launched via the task tool with mode: "background" and agent_type: "general-purpose" sometimes get stuck and never complete. The agent shows as "running" indefinitely. No completion notification arrives. read_agent with wait: true and a timeout returns the agent still running.

This doesn't happen every time, but it's frequent enough to be a real workflow blocker. The workaround is to abandon the stuck agent and re-launch as parallel explore agents instead, which reliably complete.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Start an interactive Copilot CLI session
2. Launch a background general-purpose agent with a moderately complex prompt (e.g. scanning multiple directories, reading 20+ files, synthesising findings)
3. Wait for completion notification

Expected Behaviour

The agent completes within a reasonable time (1-5 minutes) and sends a completion notification.

Actual Behaviour

The agent stays in "running" state indefinitely. After 20+ minutes with no progress, the only option is to abandon it and work around the problem.

Notably, splitting the same work into 3 parallel explore agents completes in under 60 seconds each. The general-purpose agent type seems to hang on tasks that explore handles fine.

Frequency

Observed in multiple sessions over the past week. Roughly 1 in 3 general-purpose background agents gets stuck. Explore agents have never gotten stuck for me.

Environment

• Copilot CLI version: 1.0.34
• OS: macOS Tahoe 26.3.1 (Apple Silicon)
• Shell: zsh
• Terminal: Ghostty

Workaround

Replace general-purpose background agents with parallel explore agents for read-heavy tasks. This reliably completes but limits you to Haiku and read-only tools.