Using Copilot commit messages blocks completing the courses

[rla-cf]

Summary

While doing this exercise, I got blocked by:

You've reached your monthly chat messages quota. Upgrade to Copilot Pro (30-day free trial) or wait for your allowance to renew.

How to reproduce

1. I create a blank new github account to go through these https://skills.github.com/ courses.
2. When I started with the https://github.com/ skills/copilot-codespaces-vscode one, I got redirected to the newer course: https://github.com/skills/getting-started-with-github-copilot
3. I completed that and then continued to https://learn.github.com/skills (the newer site?)
4. I then started the https://github.com/skills/customize-your-github-copilot-experience/ course.

Additional context

I used the Copilot generated commit messages for all of the courses. (in the web UI and in the codespaces vscode UI)
Do these count toward the quota of the Chat messages? Or is the free quota just not adequate to complete these courses?

https://docs.github.com/?search-overlay-open=true&search-overlay-ask-ai=true&search-overlay-input=do%20copilot%20commit%20messages%20count%20as%20chat%20messages%20in%20terms%20of%20billing%3F

[rla-cf]

Ah, got this confirmed by attempting to commit the code in the codespace:

😢 no more autogenerated commit messages

[FidelusAleksander]

Hey @rla-cf !

If you are using the free plan I'd recommend having Copilot-generated commit messages feature turned off. You can do that in your Copilot Settings https://github.com/settings/copilot/features

This only turns it off for github.com changes - you can still generate commit messages in the IDE if you choose to

Hope this helps!

[rla-cf]

Thanks for the confirmation, I would suggest to add a note to the skills instructions to warn new users to disable this default setting if they wish to later also run through the Copilot exercises.

As this is not 'falling into the pit of success' and actually hinders the adoption of Copilot.

More advanced option could be to increase the basic quota for new users (eg only for the first month)

[yathamsridharreddy]

Hello team,

I encountered this issue while completing the “Customize your GitHub Copilot experience” course.
It appears that Copilot-generated commit messages are being counted toward the Copilot chat quota. Once the quota is exhausted, the course cannot be completed, even though the learner is following the course instructions.

This can be confusing for users, especially those on the free tier. Writing commit messages manually works as a workaround, but it would be helpful if Copilot commit messages did not consume chat quota for GitHub Skills courses, or if this behavior was clearly documented.

Thank you for looking into this.