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Lesson 4 - Work on issues in parallel

Create a backlog, add an issue to the chat from the side panel, review changes with /diff, and start a second session in its own worktree.

Keep the backlog and the implementation loop in the terminal, and open separate sessions for independent work.

In this lesson, you will:

  • create three focused GitHub issues.
  • add an issue to the chat from the side panel and implement it.
  • review the change with /diff.
  • start a second session in an isolated worktree.

Create a backlog

Send the following prompt:

Review the space quiz and create three focused GitHub issues with clear titles, user-focused descriptions, and acceptance criteria. Do not implement them yet.

Work the first issue in this session

  1. Press the Left arrow key to open the side panel, then press Tab to move across to the Issues tab.
  2. Highlight the first issue and press c to add it to the chat as context. To read the full issue first, press Enter instead.
  3. Ask the agent to implement the issue.

Illustration of the Copilot CLI side panel in a terminal. The Issues tab is selected among the Current, Sessions, Issues, Pull requests, and Gists tabs. A search filter for open issues in the space-quiz repository shows one issue, Add a score screen at the end of the quiz. Hints explain that the Left arrow key opens the panel and Tab moves between tabs, and the bottom row lists keys: slash to search, Enter for details, o to open, w for worktree, c for chat, and a for all.

The side panel lists every tab across the top, and the hints along the bottom are the keys that act on whatever is highlighted.

Review the change with /diff

The project is published, so there is a known-good version to compare against. /diff shows precisely what this issue changed on top of it, which is exactly what you are about to ask someone to review.

  1. Run /diff and read every changed file.
  2. Ask for a fix for anything that looks wrong, then run /diff again.
  3. Run !git status or !git diff whenever you want to inspect Git directly.

Work the second issue in parallel

  1. Open the side panel again and switch to the Sessions tab.
  2. Start another session for the second issue without losing the first one.
  3. In the new session, run /worktree so it gets an isolated worktree instead of branching in place. Both sessions can now run at once without interfering with each other.
  4. Add the second issue to that session with c.
  5. Leave the session there for now. The next lesson plans this issue before any code is written.

Illustration of Copilot CLI output after running /worktree. It reports that it created the worktree ../space-quiz-13 on the branch issue-13-review-screen, and that this session now works there while main is untouched.

/worktree moves the session into its own checkout on its own branch, so the first session keeps working undisturbed.

Summary and next steps

You implemented the first issue, reviewed it with /diff, and started a second session in its own worktree. Continue to Lesson 5: Plan before you edit.