Visual Studio Code 1.109: Watch AI Models Think

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Visual Studio Code 1.109 has been released, primarily bringing new features for handling AI agents. Developers can now follow the response generation of Anthropic Claude models in real-time in the chat, and AI agents can provide additional information upon request. However, the January update also includes new features for the appearance of the source code editor.

Experimental Light and Dark Themes

“VS Code Light” and “VS Code Dark” are available as new experimental themes. They are still under active development but can already be tried out. Developers are encouraged to provide their feedback in the VS Code repository on GitHub.

Watch Claude Models Think

Users of Anthropic Claude models in Visual Studio Code can now follow their “thought process” live in the chat thanks to their thinking tokens. Thinking can be displayed in detail or compactly, which can be set with the chat.thinking.style setting, and tool calls are also displayed during the process (chat.agent.thinking.terminalTools). Failed tool calls will appear automatically expanded (chat.tools.autoExpandFailures).

Interactive Mermaid Diagrams and AI Follow-up Questions

Chat responses can now also render interactive Mermaid diagrams. VS Code uses the renderMermaidDiagram tool for this, allowing AI models to embed flowcharts, sequence diagrams, and other visualizations to clarify complex concepts. Developers can zoom in on or open the visualizations in an editor.

Further updates in the AI area include an experimental question tool askQuestions, which allows an AI agent to ask further questions during a conversation and potentially offer pre-defined answer options to choose from.

All details about the new features in VS Code 1.109 can be found in the announcement.

(mai)