The term "co-pilot" implies a company has to hire a software engineer to guide the AI.

The term "agent" implies you can give the AI full access to your repos and fire the software engineers you're grudgingly paying six figures to.

The second is much more valuable to executives not wanting to pay the software people that demand higher salaries than virtually everyone else in the organization.

They're was no rebrand. They're different concepts. Copilot and similar solutions are giving hints as you do the development. Agents are systems that receive a goal and will iterate actions and queries for more information until they achieve the goal.

you are quoting the party-line.

i am saying, the thing is snake-oil - a solution looking for a problem.

I'm explaining what words mean. Agentic approach has been a thing for years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_agent You can just say you don't like AI in programming, without saying incorrect things on top of that.