Conceptual illustration of a scheduled model transition. Illustration: MacDigest.
GitHub will retire Claude Opus 4.8, Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Terra from Copilot on November 16, 2026. Its October 15 notice covers all Copilot experiences, including chat, inline edits, ask and agent modes, and code completions.
Replacements and the annual-plan exception
GitHub recommends Claude Opus 5.5 for both retiring Claude models, and GPT-6.1 Sol or GPT-6 Luna for Terra. Individual Copilot subscribers on annual plans will retain Opus 4.8; the exception applies only to that model.
This announcement concerns availability inside GitHub Copilot. It does not announce retirement of the providers’ separate APIs.
Check each Mac development tool
In GitHub Copilot for Xcode, open Editor → Copilot → Open Chat and use the model menu at the bottom right. VS Code places its chat model menu at the bottom of the chat view.
Changing the chat model does not change Copilot’s inline-suggestion model. If you also use Copilot CLI, review model pins in --model, COPILOT_MODEL and custom-agent configuration; the interactive /model command lists the available choices.
Access varies by client, plan and policy. Use GitHub’s supported-model documentation to check the current choices for your account. Check the replacements in the tools you actually use rather than assuming identical availability across them.
Give team policies a look
For Copilot Business and Enterprise, the recommended alternatives are normally enabled under default model availability. Administrators who have disabled that default, or an individual replacement, should review the relevant model policy before their team switches.
Try a representative task with a supported replacement ahead of the deadline, and review its output before relying on it for a release. MacDigest has not tested or benchmarked these replacements.
