After a busy January (catch up here), we’re shifting focus to reliability and refinement. This month is about tightening core workflows, improving agent stability, and building on the MCP foundations we’ve been laying.
Agent Mode & Coding Agents
Reliability is the priority this month. We’re raising the floor on agent-driven scenarios with:
- Better progress and status indicators during long-running operations
- Improved handling of failures and retries so agents can recover more gracefully
- Diagnostics and logging improvements to help you diagnose and resolve issues faster.
- UX improvements across chat management, history, and agent-mode interactions
- Adding support for Agent Skills
- Coding Agent & Unified Sessions
Planning Agent
First steps toward a dedicated agent for multi-step task planning and execution.
Copilot SDK & Platform Integration (Experimental)
We’re also beginning early work to better integrate the Copilot CLI into Visual Studio Copilot.
Model Context Protocol (MCP)
MCP keeps external tools and services connected to VS in a governed, scalable way. February focus:
Models & Context Management
Under-the-hood work to keep Copilot fast as context grows:
- Better handling of large or complex context
- Simplifying how context is reduced and capped to avoid unexpected behavior
Copilot experience in Editor
Smoother Copilot integration with existing editor behavior:
- Copilot keyboard shortcut to accept suggestion.
- Avoid IntelliSense and Copilot conflictsÂ
- Easier Copilot support from editor quick info
We’re excited for you to try these improvements as they roll out. As always, feedback is incredibly important—please upvote or comment on the linked Developer Community items so we know what matters most to you.
Thanks for continuing to build with us.
I like the AI assistance options in VS.
It’s not perfect (like my own code) but it gives me a starting point from where I can build my own code.
If you don’t like AI, don’t use it.
Keep up the good work Microsoft.
I love AI, it is the future, but it shouldn't be forced upon people that have no interest in it! There are massively competing interests, chief among is the need to get us paying for AI, ASAP, these companies are going to go broke if we don't. However as companies implement AI features into Apps, that's where the problems begin! First is the cost, once they balance the results vs the cost, they quickly figure out that AI is WAY too expensive if deployed widly in their enterprise. I'm not sure the cost will come down fast enough to keep...
Do you know when this AI stupidity will be purged from Visual Studio? When someone at Microslop actually reads these messages.
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More Microslop, nice
I want an option to use the legacy UI style from Visual Studio 2022 in Visual Studio 2026. It’s the primary reason I haven’t migrated to the newer version; I tried it but I don’t like it.
One continuing need for a lot of business uses, is a SIMPLE – single option method of disabling all non-local – i.e. relying on an internet connection AI fully in Visual Studio. For a lot of businesses, we need a simple OFF switch, for data privacy and integrity reasons.
We’ve been asking for this for years now,please do it.
I totally agree: put implementation of this toggle switch on the roadmap!
Me too! This is the #1 reason why AI is disabled in my Visual Studio most of the time —as I have some projects that should not be visible to outside vendors’ AIs. And turning AI on/off is just an insane annoyance. E.g. Im required to turn it off, and afterwards turning it back on is optional. So net result is that its off most of the time.
Please post a link to the feedback/issue/ticket and you will have my vote for this. Preferably with the option to configure this on a solution-by-solution basis.