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ehrnst/awakemate

v0.1.0MIT

Keep a Windows laptop awake during Copilot agent turns, then restore its previous power plan.

GitHub

AwakeMate

AwakeMate logo

AwakeMate keeps a Windows PC awake while GitHub Copilot works, then restores your power plan. It creates a temporary copy and never edits your original plan or requests administrator privileges. Created because i wanted to and because other solutions looked a bit over engineered.

Requirements

  • Windows with Copilot running locally (WSL and remote Linux are unsupported).
  • PowerShell 7.2 or newer.
  • Copilot CLI or VS Code with agent-plugin command-hook support.
  • Permission to create and activate power schemes; device policy may block it.

Hooks run scripts on your computer. Review the PowerShell scripts before installing.

Install

Install with Copilot CLI:

copilot plugin install ehrnst/AwakeMate

Or install https://github.com/ehrnst/AwakeMate in VS Code's Agent Customizations editor and select the Copilot harness. Confirm that all four hooks appear. Support depends on your VS Code, Copilot, and organization settings.

Restart Copilot and start a new agent session. Installation alone does not change power settings. Do not register the hooks again in workspace or user settings; duplicate registrations can run scripts more than once.

How it works

When an agent turn starts, AwakeMate saves recovery state, starts a watchdog, and activates a copy of your current power plan. The copy disables idle sleep, hibernation, unattended sleep, and lid-close actions on AC and battery. When all active sessions finish, AwakeMate restores your original plan and deletes the copy. If you select another plan while AwakeMate runs, your selection takes precedence.

Concurrent sessions share recovery state. A watchdog checks every five seconds and clears leases for stopped runtimes. The tray icon shows whether protection is active and how many sessions use it. Select Stop for current turns from the icon menu to restore normal power settings. Hooks from those turns won't reactivate protection; later turns can.

Status and recovery

Run these commands from a checkout or the installed plugin folder:

pwsh -NoProfile -File .\scripts\manage.ps1 -Action Status
pwsh -NoProfile -File .\scripts\manage.ps1 -Action Restore

Status reports the active plan and recovery state. Restore ends all leases and removes the temporary plan. Disable or uninstall the plugin first to stop new hooks from acquiring leases.

AwakeMate stores recovery data in %LOCALAPPDATA%\copilot-AwakeMate. It reports hook errors on stderr and logs watchdog errors to recovery.log. If recovery fails, it keeps the journal so you can retry. Do not delete the journal before restoring. If it is damaged, use its original GUID with powercfg /setactive <original-guid> and delete only the recorded temporary plan after verifying recovery.

Limitations

  • AwakeMate protects active agent turns, not idle chat windows. It ignores subagent events; a subagent stays protected only while its parent turn runs.
  • If cancellation skips cleanup hooks, or a shared VS Code/Node host survives a session crash, run Restore.
  • A reboot, OS crash, or forced termination can stop the watchdog. AwakeMate does not install a logon task; run Restore or start another hook to recover.
  • AwakeMate does not disable display timeout, screen locking, explicit Sleep/Hibernate commands, critical-battery actions, or thermal protections. Windows or hardware may still suspend or shut down the PC.
  • Keeping a laptop awake drains its battery. Keep it ventilated; never put an awake, closed-lid laptop in a bag.

Uninstall

Stop agent work, restore the plan, then uninstall:

pwsh -NoProfile -File .\scripts\manage.ps1 -Action Restore
copilot plugin uninstall awakemate

If copilot plugin list shows a qualified plugin name, use that exact name.

Development

Run from a checkout without installing:

copilot --plugin-dir (Get-Location).Path

Run the test suite:

pwsh -NoLogo -NoProfile -File .\tests\Run-Tests.ps1

Optionally test packaging in an isolated COPILOT_HOME:

pwsh -NoLogo -NoProfile -File .\tests\Run-Tests.ps1 -TestPluginInstallation

The packaged scripts/awakemate.ico comes from awakemate.svg. To rebuild it, run pwsh -NoProfile -File .\scripts\Build-TrayIcon.ps1 -BrowserPath <path> with a Chromium headless renderer.

References