Error messages

Sorry, your request failed. Please try again.

Sorry, your request failed. Please try again.

In the Copilot Chat panel in VS Code, a reply gets replaced by a block like this one, from a September 2026 report:

Sorry, your request failed. Please try again.

Client Request Id: e466c439-b494-4d66-afc7-4cf25d6aef57

GH Request Id: 05F6:3EC5D3:23EF31A:293DF2B:6A9A51C6

Reason: Request Failed: 408

It's all over the VS Code tracker: 2,683 issues quote it as of September 26, 2026. We read where it's built in VS Code 1.139.1, where Copilot Chat now lives inside the main repo. It's the message for two failure types, a bad request and a plain failed one. Rate limits, quota, content filters and network errors each get a different sentence, so if you're reading this one, it isn't any of those.

The Reason line is the error

The two request IDs are for GitHub's support staff (the GH one only shows up when GitHub's servers answered at all). Everything after Reason: is what actually went wrong. Here are the Reason tails from September's reports and what each one means:

• Request Failed: 408 with user_request_timeout: the request took too long server-side. In one report it hit every model, even a one-line question with MCP turned off, which points at the service and not your setup.
• 502 Cannot have more than 128 tools per request.: too many tools from MCP servers and extensions at once. A VS Code team member said in October 2025 that tool grouping had fixed it, but a report on VS Code 1.138.0 in September 2026 still had this line. Turning off tools you aren't using in the tools picker brings the count down.
• An upstream error from your own endpoint (a temperature value it won't accept, a Model not found, a context-length complaint): you're using your own key or a custom endpoint, and that provider refused the request. The fix is in that model's settings, not Copilot's.
• net::ERR_HTTP2_PROTOCOL_ERROR: the connection broke partway. The September report came from a custom model endpoint, and it also happened less often on Auto.

What VS Code's team suggests

All of these get closed as duplicates of one tracking issue, #253136, open since January 2025 with over 400 comments. Its description says the causes range "from the user's machine to a service disruption (especially for preview models)", and it gives the same short list of things to try:

• Retry the request with the retry button.
• Retry with a different model. Preview models fail more often.
• Start a new chat.
• Open the logs: Ctrl+Shift+U (or Output: Show Output Channels…) and pick GitHub Copilot Chat.

If you post in that thread, the team asks for those logs.

Similar messages that mean something else

Sorry, there was a network error. Please try again later. is your connection or proxy. A line saying an image "attached earlier in this conversation is no longer accessible" means the fix is to remove the image or start a new chat. And anything starting "Sorry, you have been rate-limited" or "You've hit your session rate limit" is a limit with a wait time. Our page on Copilot's rate-limit messages goes through each.