Make command /new start a new session without clearing current session's history

[agustin-vaca]

Describe the feature or problem you'd like to solve

Currently both /new and /clear clear the current conversation's history, effectively starting a new conversation. Semantically, /clear is a good name for this action, but /new could be better to start a new conversation while leaving the current one intact. To achieve this, users need to restart copilot or start in a different terminal, which takes ~5s for me personally, and then they need to wait for MCPs to load, etc..

Proposed solution

Make command /new start a new session, save the current session's history, without having to run copilot again.

Example prompts or workflows

/clear Clear the conversation history
/new Start a new session

Additional context

No response

[ernesto-elsaesser]

Just lost a long session due to this misnomer. Should really be two separate commands, as suggested by @agustin-vaca

[examon]

This is now supported behind the background sessions experimental feature. /new and /clear are distinct commands: /new starts a new conversation while preserving the current session in the background, and /clear abandons the current session entirely. If this isn't working as expected for you, feel free to reopen.