GitHub Copilot for JetBrains 1.18 adds auto-approval for low-risk tool calls, Codex plan mode and per-tool MCP controls

A Copilot session in JetBrains had, until this release, one approval prompt for every tool call an agent tried to make. GitHub shipped Copilot for JetBrains 1.18 on 22 September 2026, and the changelog says two things change that shape: an assisted-approvals preview that auto-approves low-risk tool calls and keeps prompting for higher-risk ones, and per-tool controls that let a user decide which MCP tools are enabled for that session.

GitHub says the release also adds a Codex plan mode a user can review before the agent writes any code, message re-editing that rewinds both the conversation and file changes to the point you fix, and shared organisation-managed skills and instructions that follow a session in and out of local mode.

Approvals, plans and MCP controls

GitHub describes assisted approvals as public preview: "low-risk tool calls receive automatic approval, while higher-risk actions continue to prompt you for a decision". The company says this "gives you fewer approval interruptions for low-risk actions while keeping higher-risk decisions in your hands". The changelog does not enumerate which tool calls fall on which side of that line, so a team that adopts the setting has to observe which prompts stop appearing and confirm the change is one they are willing to accept.

The Codex agent now supports a plan step before it starts changing files. GitHub says a user can "review, refine, or approve a plan before implementation, giving you an opportunity to shape the approach before the agent starts making changes". That is a separate control from message re-editing, which the release also adds: a user can rewrite an earlier turn and Copilot then "rewinds both the conversation and file changes" so the session continues from that turn instead of adding a correction on top of it.

The MCP-related changes are more mechanical. A new setting toggles the built-in GitHub MCP Server on or off without touching servers a user has configured by hand, and Copilot agent sessions now carry persistent per-tool controls, so a session can turn individual tools off inside a server whose other tools it still uses. Organisation and enterprise skills and organisation-managed custom instructions now apply in both local and Copilot agent sessions.

Quality changes and one deprecation

The release notes also list inline chat reliability improvements that "preserve your edits when requests end and respecting selected thinking effort and context window settings", Codex session-startup fixes, restored embedded editors on IntelliJ 2026.3 EAP builds, and a hidden inline-chat entry point in JetBrains Gateway and remote development environments. Copilot for JetBrains 1.18 requires JetBrains IDE 2025.1 or newer, and GitHub says users on 2025.1 will see an advance notice to upgrade to 2026.1 without changing support today.

The plan mode and the assisted approvals are the two changes worth measuring rather than describing. On a codebase where an agent has been noisy, the honest test is to enable both on a task the team has run before, then compare the number of prompts, the number of file changes reversed with the new rewind, and how many minutes went to review a plan versus recover from a bad one.

Source

GitHub Changelog, New features and improvements in Copilot for JetBrains, 22 September 2026.