Starting a new Copilot Chat conversation establishes a separate conversational context for the documentation task. The unrelated refactoring exchanges remain in their original conversation instead of continuing to influence the new thread. This directly addresses the requirement to separate tasks while preserving other conversations.
Conversation history contributes information beyond the latest prompt. Earlier instructions, assumptions, terminology, and design decisions can continue to affect subsequent responses within the same session. A fresh conversation provides a clear task boundary, allowing the developer to supply the feature requirements and relevant documentation context explicitly.
Changing from sidebar chat to inline chat changes the interaction surface; it does not provide the same explicit separation of conversational history. Referencing a file supplies relevant context but does not reliably remove earlier instructions. The maximum requests setting governs agent execution limits rather than conversation isolation. Clearing history is also unnecessary when the previous work can remain available in its own session.
A new conversation can still receive applicable repository instructions and deliberately supplied context; it is the previous conversation that is separated.
Study-guide topics: conversational state, context isolation, and task boundaries. Reference: VS Code-Manage agent sessions.