VS Code Copilot Bug: Request Timed Out

Hey there, fellow developers! If you've been encountering a frustrating issue with GitHub Copilot in VS Code where your requests seem to time out, you're not alone. A recent bug has been causing the dreaded user_request_timeout error, leaving many of us staring at a blank screen when we expect some coding magic. This article dives deep into understanding this specific bug, its potential causes, and how we can navigate around it while we wait for a fix.

Understanding the "Timed out reading request body" Error

So, what exactly does Timed out reading request body. Try again, or use a smaller request size. mean in the context of VS Code and Copilot? Essentially, when you trigger Copilot – whether it's for code completion, generating a new snippet, or answering a question – your editor sends a request to the Copilot servers. This request contains information about your current code, your prompt, and other contextual data. The error message suggests that the Copilot servers are not receiving this request body within the expected timeframe. Think of it like sending a package through the mail; if it takes too long to get to the recipient, they might consider the delivery failed. In this case, the "package" is your request, and the "recipient" is the Copilot service.

Several factors could contribute to this timeout. Network latency is a prime suspect. If your internet connection is unstable, slow, or experiencing packet loss, the data might be arriving fragmented or not at all within the allowed window. VS Code's complexity and the size of the context it sends to Copilot can also play a role. If you're working on a very large file, have many extensions running, or are trying to generate code based on a massive amount of preceding code, the request body could become quite large. This increases the time it takes to transmit the data, potentially exceeding the server's timeout limit. The version of the extensions you're using and even the specific version of VS Code itself can sometimes introduce compatibility issues that lead to these kinds of problems.

For instance, the user's report details a specific scenario: Extension version: 0.33.5 and VS Code version: Code 1.106.3. While these versions might be stable for many, a specific interaction or a subtle change in how data is handled could be triggering this timeout for a subset of users. The system information provided, including CPU, memory, and even GPU status, can sometimes offer clues, though in this particular case, the hardware seems relatively standard and unlikely to be the sole bottleneck unless there's an unusual resource contention issue. The presence of numerous A/B experiments also indicates that GitHub is actively testing various features and configurations, and it's possible that a particular combination of enabled experiments could inadvertently lead to this timeout behavior.

It's also worth considering that the timeout isn't necessarily an indication of a problem on your end. The Copilot servers themselves might be under heavy load, or there could be temporary network issues between your machine and their infrastructure. The error `408 {