Response modes and Autopilot
Studio separates response mode from the higher-risk autonomy toggle. The response mode menu gives you Default, Ask, and Planning. Autopilot appears below those modes as a separate permission that auto-approves tools and removes the turn limit.Ask
Ask
Conversational and read-only. Copilot can explain output, summarize evidence, look things up, and answer questions — but it will not run commands that change state. Use this when you want a second opinion, a walk-through, or a summary.
Planning
Planning
Copilot researches first and proposes a plan before touching anything. It uses read-only tools to gather evidence, then presents a list of proposed steps for you to approve. Use this for production changes, incidents on unfamiliar devices, and multi-step diagnostics.
Default
Default
Full tool access. Copilot acts as needed and pauses for approval when it hits something moderate, dangerous, or unclassified. Use this for routine work where you trust the context and the approval prompts are enough friction.
Autopilot
Autopilot
A permission toggle, not a response mode. It auto-approves tools and runs without a turn limit. Use this only in controlled environments where the target, credentials, and blast radius are unambiguous.
Choosing the right posture
Use the lightest posture that still lets you move:| Situation | Start with | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You want an explanation of selected output. | Ask | It stays conversational and read-only. |
| You are on an unfamiliar production device. | Planning | Copilot gathers evidence and proposes a plan before acting. |
| You are doing routine diagnostics on a known host. | Default | It can use tools and pause where approval matters. |
| You are running a bounded lab task. | Default plus Autopilot | The target and blast radius are controlled. |
| You are about to write a reusable runbook. | Planning | It produces a cleaner sequence and safety assumptions. |
What Copilot can see
The power of Copilot is the operational context around the conversation. Attach context explicitly when you want precision:| Context | What it adds |
|---|---|
| Active tab | The state of whatever tab you’re on — terminal buffer, editor contents, procedure body, dashboard data. |
| Terminal selection | A focused block of output. Right-click or use the selection toolbar to send it to Copilot. |
| Image attachments | PNG, JPEG, GIF, or WebP — for diagrams, hardware photos, whiteboard sketches, or console output you couldn’t paste. |
| Voice | Dictate prompts through the voice control. |
| Hosts | Copilot can inspect your inventory, protocols, device identity, and folders. |
| Procedures | Copilot can create, edit, or run procedures. |
| Memories | Copilot can search and save structured facts. |
| Connectors | Copilot can call your REST and SOAP connectors (with approval). |
| MCP servers | Tools from your connected MCP servers become callable. |
| Generated artifacts | Markdown reports, data tables, code, dashboards, diagrams, diffs — everything Copilot has produced in the conversation. |
What Copilot can do
Copilot has access to the same operational surface you do, grouped by domain. Most of these are read-only by default; the ones that change state require approval.| Domain | Examples |
|---|---|
| Connectivity | Ping, traceroute, DNS lookup, ARP scan, SNMP get/walk, path MTU, interface info. |
| Device access | Open SSH, Telnet, serial, or RDP sessions; run commands; read output; inspect remote-session context. |
| Layer 2 diagnostics | LLDP and CDP discovery, passive ARP monitoring, STP observation, VLAN detection. |
| Security & fingerprinting | TCP banner scans, vendor and OS fingerprinting on reachable devices. |
| Parsing & text | Turn CLI output into tables, extract values with regex, diff configs, convert formats. |
| Network math | CIDR arithmetic, subnet checks, OUI lookup, ASN lookup, port-to-service lookup. |
| Inventory | Search, create, update, and delete hosts, subnets, IPs, diagrams, memories. |
| Diagramming | Create or update a network map from inventory, evidence, or a described topology. |
| Artifacts | Open markdown, data tables, code editors, status cards, forms, charts, and diffs inside the conversation. |
| Knowledge | Semantic search, knowledge-graph queries, and retrieval over your saved memories. |
| Session recording | List, replay, and search recorded SSH or Telnet sessions. |
Approval posture
Studio classifies every tool call before running it. Approvals scale with risk:| Risk class | Examples | Default behavior |
|---|---|---|
| Read-only | show, display, get, ping, traceroute, inventory lookups. | Allowed in any mode. |
| Moderate | Entering config mode, interface changes, ACL edits, saving configuration. | Requires review unless you loosen it explicitly. |
| Dangerous | Reload, erase, format, force-delete, clearing routing processes. | Requires explicit approval or is blocked. |
| Unknown | Commands Copilot can’t classify with confidence. | Treated as review-required. |
Slash commands
Slash commands change session behavior without typing a full sentence.| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/compact | Compact the conversation history to free up context. |
/clear | Start a fresh conversation. |
/model fast, /model balanced, /model deep | Switch the model tier when tier aliases are available in your build. Use settings to pick the default model. |
/effort low, /effort medium, /effort high, /effort max | Set the effort level for the current run. |
/thinking adaptive, /thinking budget, /thinking off | Control how much reasoning Copilot does before replying. |
/plan | Enter planning mode. |
/trust autonomous, /trust supervised, /trust manual | Change the approval posture when that command is available in your build. |
/devices | Show connected devices. |
/audit | Show the recent action audit trail. |
/help | List available commands. |
Streaming and steering
While Copilot is working, you can watch progress in real time — thinking state, tool calls, turn count, token usage. You can steer the current turn by sending a new message, queue a steering message for the next available action, or stop the run outright when you’ve seen enough. Copilot picks up the queued message at the next natural break. Use steering aggressively during live operations. If Copilot starts reading the wrong host, assumes the wrong VRF, or takes a plan in the wrong direction, interrupt with the correction instead of waiting for a polished answer. The transcript will still show what happened.Multi-agent work
For complex or long-running tasks, Copilot can delegate to specialist agents — a researcher for read-only context gathering, an executor for coordinated multi-step runs, focused agents for terminal operations, browser automation, network discovery, and procedure authoring. Each sub-agent inherits the same approval posture and tool restrictions you set, so a delegation never escalates beyond what the parent conversation allows. You see their progress inline in the same conversation, and the final result rolls back up as one transcript.Good prompts
| Goal | Prompt shape |
|---|---|
| Explain | ”Explain the selected BGP output and list the evidence for each conclusion.” |
| Diagnose safely | ”Use read-only checks to determine why this VLAN isn’t passing traffic.” |
| Build a change plan | ”Plan the exact checks and commands for this maintenance window — do not execute changes.” |
| Use a connector | ”List available endpoints on the monitoring connector, then show which one can fetch current alarms.” |
| Create a procedure | ”Turn this successful path into a reusable procedure with arguments for hostname and interface.” |
| Preserve knowledge | ”Save the conclusion and affected devices as a memory tagged with this incident.” |
A safe incident pattern
- Start in Ask and explain the symptom in plain language.
- Attach the active terminal, selected output, or relevant artifact.
- Move to Planning and ask for read-only checks only.
- Review the proposed commands and remove anything outside the incident scope.
- Switch to Default only when you are ready for Copilot to run approved tools.
- Ask for a final artifact: summary, evidence, timeline, and follow-up.
- Save durable facts as memories and promote the repeatable path to a procedure.
Related docs
Procedures
Turn a successful conversation into a replayable runbook.
Connectors and MCP
Give Copilot access to your APIs and third-party MCP servers.