copilot --resume and copilot --continue not working due to no session found

[mzaiprog]

Describe the bug

Copilot CLI is not recognizing it's own created local sessions under ~/.copilot/session-state and therefore can not --continue or --resume

latest LOG:

2026-01-30T20:45:22.218Z [INFO] Starting Copilot CLI: 0.0.399
2026-01-30T20:45:22.218Z [INFO] Node.js version: v24.11.1
2026-01-30T20:45:22.579Z [INFO] Login status unknown
2026-01-30T20:45:22.602Z [INFO] Remote session access enabled
2026-01-30T20:45:22.639Z [INFO] Welcome mzaiprog (via GH_TOKEN)!
2026-01-30T20:45:22.654Z [ERROR] Starting remote MCP client for github-mcp-server with url: https://api.individual.githubcopilot.com/mcp/readonly
2026-01-30T20:45:22.655Z [ERROR] Creating MCP client for github-mcp-server...
2026-01-30T20:45:22.662Z [ERROR] Connecting MCP client for github-mcp-server...
2026-01-30T20:45:23.207Z [INFO] Using default model: claude-sonnet-4.5
2026-01-30T20:45:23.310Z [ERROR] MCP client for github-mcp-server connected, took 648ms
2026-01-30T20:45:23.310Z [ERROR] Started MCP client for remote server github-mcp-server
2026-01-30T20:45:23.311Z [ERROR] GitHub MCP server configured after authentication
2026-01-30T20:45:23.327Z [INFO] Using default model: claude-sonnet-4.5
2026-01-30T20:45:26.132Z [INFO] No update needed, current version is 0.0.399, fetched latest release is v0.0.399
2026-01-30T20:45:30.706Z [INFO] Found 0 sessions in Local
2026-01-30T20:45:30.764Z [INFO] Found 0 sessions in Local
2026-01-30T20:45:34.158Z [INFO] Found 0 sessions in Remote
2026-01-30T20:45:35.277Z [INFO] Found 0 sessions in All

latest SESSIONS:

/mnt/mcee/workspace# ls -la /home/node/.copilot/session-state/ 
drwx------ 6 node node 4096 Jan 30 21:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 node node 4096 Jan 30 21:25 ..
drwx------ 4 node node 4096 Jan 30 21:23 561b6c6d-ca9e-4f1e-b312-e9733f3e6df6
drwx------ 4 node node 4096 Jan 30 21:20 72606273-0a8c-4696-b327-06fd3b3b282e
drwx------ 4 node node 4096 Jan 30 21:45 9381a694-4635-4c07-b429-f3468d8d0966
drwx------ 4 node node 4096 Jan 30 21:27 e5b3812d-14ab-4dbe-a960-84bdab47f205

/mnt/mcee/workspace# ls -la /home/node/.copilot/session-state/e5b3812d-14ab-4dbe-a960-84bdab47f205
drwx------ 4 node node 4096 Jan 30 21:27 .
drwx------ 6 node node 4096 Jan 30 21:45 ..
drwx------ 2 node node 4096 Jan 30 21:27 checkpoints
drwx------ 2 node node 4096 Jan 30 21:27 files
-rw------- 1 node node  200 Jan 30 21:27 workspace.yaml

Affected version

GitHub Copilot CLI 0.0.399

Steps to reproduce the behavior

Using a Docker image based on: node:24.13

[..]

# Install Copilot CLI
RUN set -eux; npm view @github/copilot version | tee /home/node/agent-version.txt
RUN npm install -g @github/copilot@latest

# Fix: ~/.copilot directory is not writable by non-root user
RUN mkdir -p /home/node/.copilot

USER root

From within this container

copilot --continue

or

copilot --resume

or

copilot --resume e5b3812d-14ab-4dbe-a960-84bdab47f205

Expected behavior

continue last session

Additional context

comparable feature works on codex cli