Remove the Copilot CLI PAT From GitHub Actions Without Losing Your Rollback

GitHub announced on July 2, 2026 that Copilot CLI no longer needs a personal access token when it runs in GitHub Actions. Primary source: GitHub Changelog, July 2, 2026 . Deleting a secret is easy. Proving the workflow still works—and recovering without hurriedly pasting credentials back into YAML—is the useful part. This is an unexecuted migration template, not a report from a production repository. Make one reversible change First find every place the old secret enters the job, including reusable workflows: git grep -nE 'COPILOT_PAT|COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN|GH_TOKEN|github_pat' Record the workflow, job, pinned CLI version, permissions block, and previous known-good commit. Never print environment variables while debugging. Then remove only the PAT injection. Do not upgrade the runner and CLI in the same patch. jobs: copilot-check: permissions: contents: read - env: - COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.COPILOT_PAT }} steps: - uses: actions/checkout@<PINNED_COMMIT> - run: ./scripts/setup-copilot-cli.sh - run: ./scripts/run-bounded-check.sh The scripts are placeholders for repository-owned commands. “No PAT required” does not mean “no identity or permissions exist”; follow the current setup documentation and keep permissions explicit. Add a canary with two proofs The canary should show that the legacy token is absent and that the existing bounded task still satisfies its output contract. name : copilot-cli-auth-canary on : workflow_dispatch permissions : contents : read jobs : canary : runs-on : ubuntu-latest timeout-minutes : 10 steps : - uses : actions/checkout@<PINNED_COMMIT> - name : Verify legacy PAT is absent run : | test -z "${COPILOT_PAT:-}" test -z "${COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN:-}" - run : ./scripts/setup-copilot-cli.sh - run : copilot --version - run : ./scripts/run-bounded-check.sh Use a read-only, cheap task. “Fix whatever you find” is not a canary; it is a small deployment wearing a fake mustache. Define pass criteria before clicking Run: absent legacy variables, e