Manage Agent push blocked: clean cloned Copilot Studio agent missing CdsBotId but validation requires it

[leila-marspooner]

Area

Agents (sub-agents)

Description

I am completing the Agent Academy YAML Specialist mission and became blocked during the final Apply/Push step.

A clean clone of a Copilot Studio agent produced a settings.mcs.yml file that does not contain CdsBotId. However, both the VS Code Copilot Studio extension and the manage-agent push/validate workflow report that settings.mcs.yml is missing the required property CdsBotId.

This appears to be a mismatch between the clean cloned agent output and the validation schema used during Apply/Push.

I was able to complete the local YAML authoring work, but could not push/apply the changes back to Copilot Studio.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a new Copilot Studio agent for the YAML Specialist mission.
2. Clone the agent locally using the Copilot Studio VS Code extension.
3. Inspect the clean cloned settings.mcs.yml.
4. Observe that settings.mcs.yml does not contain CdsBotId.
5. Make the Lab 3.1 YAML changes:
   • Create variables/UserCountry.mcs.yml
   • Create topics/ConversationInit.mcs.yml
   • Update topics/ConversationStart.mcs.yml to initialize Global.UserCountry
   • Update agent.mcs.yml instructions to use {Global.UserCountry}
6. Run Preview in the VS Code Copilot Studio extension.
7. Attempt Apply, or use the Manage Agent push workflow.
8. Validation blocks the push because settings.mcs.yml is missing CdsBotId.
9. Attempting to insert the real bot ID found from connection details did not resolve the issue; validation/push continued to fail.

Expected Behavior

A clean cloned Copilot Studio agent should either include the required CdsBotId value, or the Apply/Push validation process should not require a property that is absent from the cloned agent definition.

The local YAML changes should be able to apply/push successfully to the Copilot Studio agent.

Actual Behavior

The clean cloned `settings.mcs.yml` did not contain `CdsBotId`.

The VS Code extension and Manage Agent validation reported:

`settings.mcs.yml is missing required property "CdsBotId"`

After attempting to resolve the issue, validation still failed and a force push returned a server-side error:

`Passed entity object cannot be null or empty`

This prevented completion of the Apply/Push step in the YAML Specialist mission.

Environment

• OS: macOS
• VS Code: latest installed version
• GitHub Copilot CLI: installed through VS Code / GitHub Copilot CLI terminal
• Copilot Studio VS Code extension: installed
• Plugin: copilot-studio@skills-for-copilot-studio
• Mission: Agent Academy YAML Specialist
• Node: installed via local Mac environment

Logs / Screenshots

I can provide screenshots/log output showing:
- Clean cloned `settings.mcs.yml` with no `CdsBotId`
- VS Code Problems panel showing missing `CdsBotId`
- Apply failure
- Manage Agent push/validate failure
- Force push server error: `Passed entity object cannot be null or empty`

[GiorgioUghini]

Can you provide the screenshots? I can push without problems an agent that has no CdsBotId in the agent settings (and by memory, I don't recall an agent having such property in the settings ever).