In late April 2026, Microsoft shipped VS Code 1.117. Buried in the release was a change: the github.copilot.chat.generateCommitMessage.addCoAuthoring setting was flipped from off to all by default. That meant "Co-authored-by: Copilot [email protected] " was now being appended to every commit message in the background — silently, without showing up in the commit message editor, and critically, without verifying that Copilot had generated any of the code. Developers noticed within days. The backlash was significant. VS Code 1.119 shipped May 3 with the default reverted and a consent requirement added. Microsoft apologized. The technical fix was straightforward. The governance question it exposed is not. What the incident actually revealed The developer anger wasn't really about attribution credit. It was about consent and accuracy. The co-author trailer was added to commits where AI features were disabled. It was added when developers had manually written every line. It attributed work that wasn't done.…