Visual Studio Code 1.110 gets new features for AI agent configuration

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The February update Visual Studio Code 1.110 has been released. Microsoft is once again focusing on the AI features of its source code editor. Among other things, developers will gain deeper insight into chat sessions. As an experimental feature, VS Code can handle agent plug-ins that provide chat with custom settings.

More control, more detailed insights and chat summaries

Since the previous version 1.109, VS Code users have been able to interact with the Claude Agent SDK. Now they are getting new functions for it: During a conversation with the AI, they can send further messages to change the AI agent's solution approach or to provide additional requests.

The Agent Debug Panel is available as a preview function, replacing the chat action Diagnostics. In the new panel, developers gain deeper insights into chat events in real time, including system prompts and tool calls. They can see which prompt files, skills, hooks, or other custom adjustments are loaded per session. This is intended to simplify troubleshooting of the agent configuration.

The panel can be called up from the command palette: Developer: Open Agent Debug Panel. Alternatively, developers can click the gear icon in the upper area of the chat view and select Show Agent Logs.

To continue longer conversations in the chat, the new Context Compaction feature is also available. It automatically summarizes the previous conversation when a context window reaches its limit, but can also be triggered manually. To achieve this, developers enter /compact into the chat input field. They can enrich the command with further instructions, for example, to set a specific focus in the summary.

Experimental plug-ins for AI agents

Agent plug-ins can be used as an experimental feature. These are pre-made collections of chat customizations. They can contain skills, commands, agents, MCP servers, and hooks. Developers can install them in VS Code from the Extensions view. To achieve this, they enter @agentPlugins in the search field or execute Chat: Plugins from the command palette.

By default, plug-ins from the GitHub repositories copilot-plugins and awesome-copilot are displayed, but it is also possible to specify additional sources, for example, private repos or local directories.

New features for accessibility and graphics rendering

Beyond AI, other innovations have found their way into VS Code, for example, for improved accessibility. The chat question carousel is now fully accessible to screen reader users. VS Code also plays an accessibility signal and displays a notification as soon as the chat asks a question or requires confirmation. These hints also appear when users are in a different window.

For rendering high-fidelity graphics directly in the terminal, VS Code now supports the Kitty graphics protocol. However, some features of the protocol are not yet available, including animations and Unicode placeholders.

Details on these and other new functions in Visual Studio Code 1.110 are provided in the announcement.

(mai)