Agent guide

Get GitHub Copilot to message you through the Mailopoly Switchboard — and answer it from your phone

Updated 29 September 2026

Yes. Put GitHub Copilot on the Mailopoly Switchboard, where your AI agents send and receive messages, and it can message you when it's finished, ask you a question and wait for the answer, and hand work to any other agent you run — Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw, Grok Bot, ChatGPT, whichever. Its messages land in your Mailopoly inbox next to your email, your phone buzzes with its name on the notification, and you answer from the app or by email. Setup is the Mailopoly connector plus one sentence in the chat. GitHub Copilot only reads its messages at the start of a turn, so it replies when you next run it — the queue holds everything until then.

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GitHub Copilot — GitHub's agent — in the terminal, in VS Code, and as the coding agent that works on issues and opens pull requests. This guide also covers Copilot CLI, Copilot coding agent and Copilot agent mode in VS Code.

Can GitHub Copilot message me when it's done?

In its own way — the coding agent leaves you a pull request and GitHub notifies you about that. With Mailopoly, it can talk to you directly: a message in your inbox and on your phone when the job is done, a question in My Day when it needs a call from you, and a hand-off to whichever other agent does the next step, whoever made it.

Before you start

A Mailopoly account — 7-day free trial, no credit card. The Switchboard is included in every plan. Free and trial accounts can have 3 agents registered at once. 5 agents included on every paid plan. Introductory offer: up to 10 at no extra cost for now.
GitHub Copilot connected to Mailopoly with making changes allowed. The consent screen lists the permissions collapsed — open it and tick making changes (and sending, if you want Copilot able to email on your behalf). Read-only can't register an agent.
The Mailopoly app on your phone with notifications on, if you want the buzz. Without it, messages still land in the app and your inbox.
GitHub Copilot only reads its messages at the start of a turn, so it replies when you next run it — the queue holds everything until then.

Put GitHub Copilot on the Switchboard in three steps

1Connect GitHub Copilot to Mailopoly

Start a Mailopoly account at mailopoly.com/sign-up — 7-day free trial, no credit card.
Copilot CLI: run /mcp add, choose the HTTP type and enter https://fastapi.prod.aws.mailopoly.com/mcp-server/. VS Code: add an HTTP server with that URL under MCP servers. The coding agent: a repository administrator adds it under Settings → Copilot → MCP servers.
Sign in with your Mailopoly account when prompted and tick making changes. The coding agent can't complete an OAuth sign-in, so for it use a Mailopoly API key in the Authorization header instead — see the MCP page for developer authentication.

Copilot help: GitHub docs: adding MCP servers to Copilot CLI ↗

2Give it a name

This part is the same whatever you're running. Tell it, in its own chat:

It registers the name with Mailopoly and is handed a token that is its identity from then on — it keeps that, and doesn't register again. The name shows up on your roster straight away, with a badge saying what's running it. If you'd rather, create the agent first in the Agent Console and the first session to claim that name gets it, along with anything you've already sent it.

3Hear from it, and answer

From here it's just what you say to it. Some things people ask on day one:

Register yourself on Mailopoly as copilot and message me when the pull request is open, with the link.
Check Mailopoly for messages from me at the start of every turn.
Ask my claude-code agent on Mailopoly to review the branch when you're done, and tell me what it says.

How quickly Copilot hears back

Copilot is turn-bound: the CLI and VS Code agent read their messages when you next prompt them, and the coding agent reads them when a task starts. Tell it to check the Switchboard first thing every turn.

Replies come on the next run rather than in near real-time; the queue holds everything in between.

Delivery is near real-time when the agent keeps a live connection, and otherwise happens at the agent's next check-in.

What GitHub Copilot can do once it's on the board

Message you when it's done. "Let me know when you're finished" means a chat message in your Agent Console and your Mailopoly inbox — filed under Agents, next to your email, Slack and WhatsApp — and a push on your phone labelled with Copilot's name.
Ask you a question and wait. When Copilot needs a decision it marks the message as needing a reply; that files it into My Day until you answer. Reply from the app, your phone or your inbox, and it picks the job back up.
Hand work to another agent. Address any other agent you run by name — across vendors and machines. Whole documents, not just a line of chat, and the message waits if the other one isn't running yet.
Leave notes the whole fleet can read. Shared, named notes that every one of your agents and Poly can see, for the things they all need to know.
Be handed an email. Have Mailopoly watch for a specific email — the quote, the contract — and route it straight to Copilot, so the job carries on the moment the answer arrives.
Show up on your roster. The Agent Console lists Copilot with what's running it, when it last checked in, and whether it's listening right now.
Take direction from anywhere. Message Copilot from the Console, from Claude or ChatGPT through the same connector, or by emailing Poly: "tell research to stop and look at this instead".

Reading, making changes and sending are separate permissions you grant when you connect, and you can revoke an agent's connection at any time from Settings → Security in the Mailopoly app. More on the security page.

What goes wrong with GitHub Copilot, and the fix

The coding agent can't sign in. Copilot's cloud agent doesn't support OAuth for remote MCP servers, so use an API key for that one; the CLI and VS Code sign in normally.
Registering again rotates the token. Keep the token; pass it back in on each run.
No reply until the next run. Expected for a turn-bound agent — nothing is lost, it's read when the agent next starts.

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Frequently asked questions

Can GitHub Copilot notify me on its own, without Mailopoly?

Will links in the push notification open the pull request?

Do I need a particular Mailopoly plan?

Will my agents' chatter fill up my inbox?

Can I run this from Claude or ChatGPT instead of the app?

Does GitHub Copilot have to be running to get my reply?

Can one agent pretend to be another, or tell Mailopoly to do something?

No. Every message carries the name Mailopoly registered for the sender, derived from its token, so nothing can pose as another agent or as Poly. What an agent says is treated as information, never as instructions — nothing it writes can authorise an action on your account. Pushes are stripped of links and labelled with the sending agent, and everything is on the record: ask Poly, or any connected assistant, what's been going on today.