How to reduce github copilot`s premium requests usage and maximize efficiency
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How to reduce github copilots premium requests usage and maximize efficiency ? Make a plan, a kaizen plan at best. Instruct precisely, cover edge cases, allow all tools to execute and pray the LLM will understand You. Want to share my simple methodology that not only can save money but also ease in and smoothen out the workflow.
As always You could benefit from RTFM ! Reading the foqing / friendly / flopsy manual. I know You never read it cause real man don`t do it ( how about real woman ? ) ? God knows if gamers would not have to go through the tutorial, they would not play it.
A request is any interaction where you ask Copilot to do something for you—whether it’s generating code, answering a question, or helping you through an extension. Each time you send a prompt in a chat window or trigger a response from Copilot, you’re making a request.
In additional we get the multipliers for different models :
Fastest way to drain your premium requests / tokens
Write „bad” prompts. Be vague. – This could generate a lot more requests and questions to make the job done. If it doesn`t know exactly it will try to figure to make more requets.
Do a lot of stuff on files – copilot will run and rerun file changes like i.ex once it added „with bom” encoding to my files, took 3 reruns for it to make it work and not throw an error
Overuse MCP servers. – Every use of mcp server might add to the context in a separate step. It would be nice to run it as „get all at frist and then push it to the context”. This i am not sure yet, does the mcp server run from the agent or it already uses llm to decide how to run it ?
Iterate with tests. – When You tell copilot to iterate over solutions, it will usually run tests like np. run test:unit –run and check if it works. If it does, great success ! If it ain`t… it will try figure out the issues. Fix them again, run tests againt. Such a loop with opus 4.5 with x3 multiplier will burn your premium requsts like water on a mill.
How to reduce github copilot`s premium requets usage and maximize efficiency
This is just one of the ideas. You have to have a „vibe” to know how those llms / agents will behave. Simplest solution is to use free models. The downside is that they simply are inferior. I wonder how much they cannot handle some tasks and how much they tend to be underperforming by design…
Below points can be a double edge sword. Just be cautious when using any of those.
Make a plan using a free model.
Make it kaizen style – describe small steps.
Cover the ambigous and edge cases
Describe some fallback
Use instructions so You won`t have to reprompt with fixes and adjusting the output
Add proper context so it can find the necessery references.
Use mcp servers
After creating a plan, even using plan mode, adjust it and make it run on what ever model You deem can handle the workload.
Execute the plan and…
Summary
How to reduce github copilot`s premium requests usage and maximize efficiency ? Be carefull with prompts, if You think / feel you could improve on the prompt, that probably is the case. More time spend on making a proper request should save You tokens / requets in the long run on fixes.
