Clarification on licensing for using Copilot CLI in GitHub Actions triggered by external systems

[evgbu]

Hi team,

I’m looking for guidance on how Copilot CLI licensing applies in one of our automation scenarios. We have GitHub Copilot Enterprise licenses, and in our setup the Copilot CLI runs inside a GitHub Actions workflow. The CLI authenticates via an access token stored as a GitHub Actions secret, which is tied to a specific licensed user. However, the workflow itself can be triggered by API calls from an external system (e.g. Jira On-Prem) and may represent work on behalf of multiple end users.

1. Is this setup compliant with the Copilot licensing terms, given that the workflow might effectively be used by multiple users who do not each have their own Copilot license or we couldn't match them to the request?
2. If this usage is not permissible, could you recommend an alternative pattern for cases where automation is triggered by external systems and mapping end users to individual licenses or tokens is not feasible?

Thanks in advance for your guidance!

[RyanHecht]

Hey @evgbu --

This is, regrettably, the only way to use Copilot CLI in automation at this time. We're working on unblocking support for org-owned tokens and the GitHub token made available in Actions runners.

I'll seek to get a definitive answer on license compliance, but in the meantime I can tell you that use of Copilot CLI in its Public Preview phase is governed by GitHub Pre-release License Terms.