Feature Request: Persist /add-dir allowed directories across sessions

[PaoloDAubert77]

Feature Request

Summary

The /add-dir command adds directories to the allowed list for file access, but these permissions are session-scoped only and are lost when the session ends. There is no built-in way to persist allowed directories across sessions.

Current Behavior

• /add-dir <path> adds a directory to the allowed list for the current session
• /list-dirs shows the allowed directories for the current session
• After restarting Copilot CLI (even with /restart), all added directories are gone

Expected Behavior

Users should be able to mark directories as permanently trusted, so they appear automatically in /list-dirs on every new session without needing to re-add them each time.

Proposed Solution

• Add a /add-dir --permanent (or /add-dir --global) flag to persist directories in ~/.copilot/config.json
• Add a corresponding /remove-dir <path> command to revoke persistent access
• /list-dirs should show both session-scoped and persistent directories (with a label distinguishing them)

Use Case

When working with directories on a Windows host via WSL (e.g. /mnt/c/Users/paolo/git/myproject), users need to re-add the same directories at the start of every Copilot session, which is repetitive and breaks workflow.

Workaround

Currently none — trusted_folders in config.json serves a different purpose (workspace trust for MCP server loading) and does not affect /list-dirs.

[GoodKnightRestDev]

Adding to this: trusted_folders in config.json is documented as "list of folders where permission to read or execute files has been granted" — but it doesn't actually affect in-session file access, only the startup trust prompt. So there's currently no persistent solution at all. /add-dir --permanent would fix both issues.

[radiomix]

I got a folder structure like this

/path/to/
├── repo-1-allowed
└── repo-2-not-allowed

I am struggling to get copilot include/exclude accordingly. My settings in .copilot/config.json look like this:

"trusted_folders": [
   "/path/to/repo-1-allowed",
<skip>
   "/path/to/repo-x-allowed"
]

On startup it got permission to read the folder i started inside but non of the others *allowed folders.

Prompting each time /add-dirs repo-x-allowed is annoying!