VS Code Copilot gets stuck on “Retrieving Notebook summary…” when using Jupyter Notebooks
When using GitHub Copilot Chat with Jupyter Notebooks (.ipynb) in VS Code, you may encounter a situation where Copilot displays “Retrieving Notebook summary…” indefinitely and never responds. This article explains why it happens and how to avoid it in practice.
Conclusion
At the moment, GitHub Copilot Chat is not stable when used directly with Jupyter Notebooks. The most reliable workaround is to convert notebooks into Python scripts (.py) and use Copilot on those files instead.
What happens
Typical symptoms include:
- Copilot Chat shows “Retrieving Notebook summary…”
- The message never disappears
- Copilot becomes completely unresponsive
Waiting does not resolve the issue.
Why it happens
Copilot attempts to summarize the entire notebook as context. Large notebooks, image outputs, or extensive cell results can cause the internal summarization process to stall indefinitely.
Practical workaround
Disable Notebook Context if needed, clear all outputs, but for consistent stability, convert notebooks to .py files and split logic across scripts. Copilot performs significantly better on plain Python files.
Final note
Until Copilot’s notebook support matures, separating experimentation (Notebook) and implementation (Python scripts) is the safest development strategy.
Reference Links
GitHub Copilot issue: Copilot Chat stuck retrieving notebook summary https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-copilot/issues/1175
VS Code Jupyter integration documentation https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/datascience/jupyter
GitHub Copilot documentation https://docs.github.com/en/copilot
