GitHub Copilot · VS Code · Microsoft AI · Community
Released April 8, VS Code 1.115 introduces the VS Code Agents companion app (preview, Insiders only): a dedicated application for running parallel agent sessions across multiple repositories simultaneously, each isolated in its own worktree. It ships alongside a comprehensive GitHub blog post summarizing VS Code releases v1.111 through v1.115 — the full March and early April arc of Copilot agent improvements — making this week both a forward-looking release and a useful retrospective for anything you missed over the past month.
VS Code 1.115 ships the VS Code Agents companion app (preview), a standalone application that runs alongside VS Code Insiders and is purpose-built for agent-native development. It lets you kick off agent sessions across multiple repositories in parallel, each isolated in its own worktree. A context-switching UI lets you track session progress, view diffs inline, leave feedback, and create pull requests without switching windows. All your existing customizations carry over: custom instructions, prompt files, custom agents, MCP servers, hooks, and plugins. No separate install required — it ships with VS Code Insiders and is accessible from the Command Palette via Chat: Open Agents Application.
Chat: Open Agents Application, or find it in your Start menu / Applications folder.Previously, background terminals in agent sessions were read-only — agents could check output via get_terminal_output but could not respond to prompts. VS Code 1.115 adds the send_to_terminal tool, allowing agents to continue interacting with background terminals. Alongside this, an experimental chat.tools.terminal.backgroundNotifications setting automatically notifies the agent when a background terminal finishes or requires input, eliminating the need for the agent to poll manually.
"chat.tools.terminal.backgroundNotifications": true to settings.json (experimental).send_to_terminal.send_to_terminal and background notifications, the agent detects the prompt, sends the credential, and continues the setup — no manual intervention needed.VS Code 1.115 brings three quality-of-life improvements to the integrated browser for agent sessions. The Run Playwright Code tool now handles long-running scripts (over 5 seconds by default) by returning a deferred result for the agent to poll, rather than timing out. Agents are now strongly discouraged from opening duplicate browser tabs — if a tab is already open to the same host, no new tab is opened unless explicitly requested. Tool call labels are now more descriptive with a direct link to the relevant browser tab.
GitHub published a consolidated summary of all VS Code Copilot changes shipped across March and early April (versions 1.111–1.115). Key items if you missed any: Autopilot for fully autonomous agent sessions (no approval dialogs), configurable thinking effort per session directly from the model picker, integrated browser debugging, image and video attachment support in chat, nested subagents (chat.subagents.allowInvocationsFromSubagents), the unified chat customizations editor (Preview), MCP servers bridged into Copilot CLI sessions, and session forking.
Copilot cloud agent's built-in security and quality checks — CodeQL, GitHub Advisory Database, secret scanning, and Copilot code review — now run in parallel rather than sequentially, reducing total validation time by 20%. These checks fire automatically every time the cloud agent writes code, and the agent attempts to resolve any issues found before completing work and requesting review. A new setting in the Copilot → Cloud agent section of repository settings lets you configure which validation tools run for each repo.
GitHub Mobile now exposes the full Copilot cloud agent workflow on both iOS and Android: research your codebase, generate an implementation plan before writing code, make changes on a branch without immediately opening a PR, review the diff and iterate, and create a pull request when ready. If you include it in your prompt, the agent will create the PR automatically when the session completes. This extends last week's Mobile Copilot tab refresh with deeper agent action support.
Organization admins and security managers can now launch a Copilot chat session directly from secret risk assessment or Code Security risk assessment result pages. Copilot provides contextual explanations of findings and guided remediation steps — no need to copy scan results into a separate chat window and re-explain the context. Available to orgs with GitHub Advanced Security.
GitHub is retiring Opus 4.6 Fast for Copilot Pro+ users starting April 10 to streamline model offerings and improve infrastructure reliability. Simultaneously, new usage limits are being rolled out over the next few weeks: a service reliability limit (session-level, wait for reset when hit) and a model/family capacity limit (switch to an alternative or use Auto mode when hit). The changes are driven by high-concurrency patterns straining shared infrastructure.
GitHub has paused new Copilot Pro free trials due to a significant rise in abuse of the free trial system. Existing trials are unaffected. No timeline has been given for when new trials will resume. Paid subscriptions (Pro, Pro+, Business, Enterprise) continue without interruption. This is a service protection measure and not a product change.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is now accessible across Teams chats, channels, calling, and meetings — expanding beyond its previous limited scope to everywhere users collaborate. Alongside this, Copilot's code interpreter can now analyze files surfaced through enterprise search in Copilot Chat even if they were not manually uploaded, and Declarative Agents can now interpret embedded images in Word, PowerPoint, and PDF files to extract insights from charts, diagrams, and screenshots.
Two new Copilot Studio Wave 1 (April–September) features have entered preview this month: MCP-compliant tools in agent workflows (Preview April, GA October) — allowing agents to call any MCP-compatible external tool — and custom metrics for analytics (Preview April, GA May), letting admins define their own success metrics for agent evaluation. Also newly in preview: configure triggers with end-user credentials, and credentials oversharing detection for safer agent sharing.
Two M365 Copilot quality-of-life improvements this week. First, Copilot now reduces the number of confirmation prompts shown during read-only actions — operations that do not modify external systems no longer require approval clicks, while safety checks remain intact for write actions. Second, a new option in Windows File Explorer and the OneDrive Activity Center lets you generate a Copilot summary of a file and include it directly in the share dialog, saving the step of summarizing separately before sharing.
The GitHub-published summary of VS Code releases v1.111–1.115 reads like the most useful onboarding document for Copilot agent mode produced so far. Developers on Reddit and X are circulating it as the definitive "catch-up" for anyone who missed the rapid weekly cadence. Among the most-shared takeaways: agent-scoped hooks (define pre and post hooks in YAML frontmatter of .agent.md files without affecting other agents) and monorepo customization discovery (parent folder traversal to the Git root).
A detailed walkthrough of using Copilot Agent Mode and Plan Mode in IntelliJ IDEA covering the three modes (Chat, Edits, Agent), how Agent Mode researches your existing controllers, database models, service layers, and repository patterns before writing code, and how Plan Mode generates a high-level architecture review before implementation. Covers model selection (GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet, Gemini) and how context management works at the IntelliJ level.
Two metrics changes landed this week that enterprise admins and team leads managing Copilot rollouts will care about. First, CLI activity is now integrated into the top-level Copilot usage metrics API totals, including code generation activity, acceptance counts, lines added/deleted, and dimensional breakdowns by feature, model, and language. Second, cloud agent active user counts (daily, weekly, monthly) are now aggregated into enterprise and organization reports, reflecting the rename from "coding agent" to "cloud agent."
The VS Code Agents companion app (available now in VS Code Insiders) is the highest-leverage item this week for a Java fullstack tech lead managing multiple repos. The ability to run three or four agent sessions simultaneously — one per microservice — each in its own isolated worktree, while monitoring all diffs from one window, fundamentally changes how agentic work scales across a service-oriented codebase. Enable it in Insiders today, run it alongside your stable VS Code for a week, and identify which repetitive cross-service tasks (dependency updates, API contract changes, test scaffolding) benefit most from parallel delegation.
The GitHub Copilot SDK is now publicly available in five languages including, for the first time, Java via Maven. It exposes the same production agent runtime that powers Copilot CLI and the cloud agent — giving any application or internal tool the ability to embed planning, tool invocation, streaming, and multi-turn sessions without building a custom AI orchestration layer. Combined with BYOK support for OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, and Anthropic, this is the most significant extensibility milestone since Copilot CLI went GA in February.
Released April 1, VS Code 1.114 focuses on reducing friction in the chat workflow. The standout additions are a "Copy Final Response" command that strips out agent thinking and tool call noise before copying to clipboard, unified codebase indexing that removes the local-vs-remote split, and the ability to reference any previous chat session inside /troubleshoot for after-the-fact diagnosis.
/troubleshoot #session to trigger a session picker and investigate past sessions after the fact, without reproducing the issue.imageCarousel.chat.enabled now supports video playback in addition to images.chat.editMode.hidden until then./troubleshoot #session, pick last Tuesday's session from the picker, and Copilot reads the debug logs and tells you what went wrong — no need to reproduce it.A new proposed API in 1.114 lets tool authors scope approval flows to a specific combination of tool plus arguments. Previously, approving the "Run VS Code Command" tool meant approving all commands. Now a tool can prompt "Allow running editor.action.formatDocument?" separately from other commands, so users grant narrow, targeted permissions rather than broad blanket approvals for dangerous operations.
approveCombination field on LanguageModelToolConfirmationMessages to label the specific approval.VS Code 1.114 adds a group policy key Claude3PIntegration that administrators can use to disable the Claude agent integration in Copilot Chat org-wide. When applied, the github.copilot.chat.claudeAgent.enabled setting is managed by the organization and users cannot override it. Aimed at enterprises with data residency or model-approval requirements.
Visual Studio 2026's latest release notes surface three Copilot additions: custom agents via .agent.md files with full workspace awareness and MCP connections; a "Profile with Copilot" command in Test Explorer that runs a chosen test, analyzes CPU and instrumentation data, and delivers actionable insights; and automatic NuGet vulnerability detection and resolution directly from Solution Explorer.
.agent.md file and they appear in the agent picker automatically.The GitHub Copilot SDK is now in public preview across Node.js/TypeScript, Python, Go, .NET, and — newly — Java via Maven. It exposes the same agent runtime that powers Copilot CLI and the cloud agent, providing tool invocation, streaming, multi-turn sessions, blob attachments, OpenTelemetry tracing, and a permission framework out of the box. BYOK support lets enterprises use their own OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, or Anthropic keys. Available to all subscribers including Copilot Free.
pom.xml.npm install @github/copilot-sdkpip install github-copilot-sdkreplace, append, or prepend callbacks to customize the Copilot system prompt without rewriting it entirely.Copilot cloud agent (formerly "Copilot coding agent") drops the requirement to always create a pull request. It can now generate code on a branch and let you review the full diff before deciding to open a PR. Added alongside this: a plan mode where Copilot generates and presents an implementation plan for your approval before writing any code, and a deep research mode for broad codebase questions grounded in repository context.
GitHub Mobile's Copilot experience gets a major refresh on both iOS and Android. On Android, Copilot moves into the navigation bar as a dedicated tab. A new Home experience shows agent sessions and chat history at a glance, with a session list that filters by state and updates in real time. New in-app actions include viewing full session logs natively, creating a pull request from a completed session, reviewing the PR, and stopping a running session.
As reported last week, starting April 24 GitHub will use Copilot Free, Pro, and Pro+ interaction data — including accepted completions, code snippets, cursor context, file names, and chat content — to train AI models unless users opt out. Community reaction has been strongly negative, with developers calling the opt-in-by-default approach a dark pattern. Importantly: users who are members of or outside collaborators with a paid GitHub organization are excluded regardless of their personal subscription tier.
Microsoft's 2026 transformation of M365 Copilot is now in full rollout. Copilot Cowork enables delegating multi-step background tasks with checkpoint reviews — drafting, sending, scheduling, organizing across apps. Work IQ gives Copilot organizational memory: it understands roles, communication patterns, past decisions, and task histories to produce contextually relevant assistance. Agent Mode is rolling out in Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint, enabling continuous refinement rather than one-shot generation.
Microsoft's 2026 Wave 1 release plan is published, covering new Copilot features from April through September 2026. General availability began April 1. Highlights include richer Sales Chat and Sales Home experiences in Copilot for Sales, configurable record summaries for deals and accounts, new governance and extensibility controls for scaling AI responsibly, and improved email and meeting intelligence in Teams and Outlook.
Microsoft's Azure Dev Community published a model selection guide mapping development tasks to the right Copilot model tier. Key framework: lightweight models (Claude Haiku 4.5, Gemini 3 Flash) for quick edits; general-purpose coding models (GPT-4.1, GPT-5-mini, Claude Sonnet) for daily work; deep reasoning models (GPT-5.1, Gemini 3 Pro, Claude Opus 4.5) for architecture and debugging; agentic models (GPT-5.2-Codex) for repo-wide multi-step changes. Auto mode also gets a 10% premium request discount in Copilot Chat.
A deep-dive tutorial evolving a basic M365 Copilot agent into a full autonomous workplace automation agent using VS Code, GitHub Copilot, Copilot Studio, and Work IQ. The agent detects and replies to emails, saves attachments to OneDrive, edits documents based on email instructions, and sends Teams notifications — all generated from a single natural language plan in VS Code agent mode. Demonstrates how to move agents from Copilot Agent Builder into Copilot Studio and add MCP tools for Teams, Outlook, Word, and OneDrive.
A detailed breakdown of the Copilot CLI GA milestone, covering what GA actually means for stability and SLAs, the six versions shipped that week, and practical workflow patterns. Key features highlighted: Plan mode (Shift+Tab), Autopilot mode, background delegation with & prefix, specialized built-in agents (Explore, Task, Code Review, Plan), auto-updates via Homebrew/WinGet, and cross-session repository memory. The article frames it as a shift from tool to infrastructure.
& to delegate a task to the cloud Copilot coding agent while your terminal stays free for other work — use /resume to switch between local and cloud sessions.Real-world lessons from extensive use of GitHub Copilot Agent Mode in Visual Studio 2026. Practical findings: Claude Haiku 4.5 offers the best speed-to-cost ratio for C#/.NET; use free models to read specs and premium models to write code; tasks creating 70+ entities can take 3+ hours so interrupt and use PowerShell scripts instead; always confirm what Copilot can "see" before starting large tasks; old and new solutions must share a parent folder for rewrites.
The Copilot SDK going public preview with Java support via Maven is the most directly actionable item this week for a Java fullstack tech lead. You can now add the SDK to any Spring Boot service and embed Copilot's full agent runtime: define custom tools, stream responses, attach binary data, and gate sensitive operations with approval handlers — all without building your own LLM orchestration. Start with a single internal tool (e.g., an automated code-review summary service or a dependency vulnerability reporter), test with BYOK using your own API key, and measure the reduction in manual review time before expanding to the team.
Released March 25, VS Code 1.113 is the most agent-focused release yet: subagents can now invoke other subagents for multi-step workflows, MCP servers you configure in VS Code are bridged directly into Copilot CLI and Claude agents, and reasoning effort (low/medium/high) is now controllable from the model picker UI. This release, combined with the Copilot CLI having six point releases this week alone, signals the terminal and editor are converging into a single agentic platform.
VS Code 1.113 introduces chat.subagents.allowInvocationsFromSubagents, enabling subagents to call other subagents. Previously blocked to prevent infinite recursion, this unlocks genuinely complex multi-step agentic workflows where a coordinator agent delegates specialized tasks to role-specific subagents — all within a single chat session.
"chat.subagents.allowInvocationsFromSubagents": true.MCP servers you configure in VS Code are now bridged into Copilot CLI and Claude agent sessions. Both user-defined servers and workspace mcp.json servers are included. Previously MCP was only available to local agents running inside the editor — now your terminal agent sessions have the same rich tool access as your chat panel sessions.
mcp.json or user settings./mcp show in the CLI — you should see your VS Code-configured servers listed.Reasoning models like Claude Sonnet 4.6 and GPT-5.4 now show a Thinking Effort submenu in the model picker — choose Low, Medium, or High without going into settings. The picker label shows the active level (e.g. "GPT-5.4 · Medium"). Note: the old github.copilot.chat.anthropic.thinking.effort setting is now deprecated in favor of this UI control.
VS Code 1.113 introduces the Chat Customizations editor (Preview) — a single UI for managing all chat customizations: custom instructions, prompt files, custom agents, and agent skills. Includes a built-in code editor with syntax highlighting, AI-generated initial content, and direct browsing of MCP server and plugin marketplaces. Open via the gear icon in the Chat view or Chat: Open Chat Customizations in the Command Palette.
You can now fork a Copilot CLI or Claude agent session at any point in conversation history — creating a copy to explore a different approach without losing the original. Enable via github.copilot.chat.cli.forkSessions.enabled. Previously only available for local editor agent sessions, now extended to the full terminal workflow.
Images in chat — whether you attached screenshots or the agent generated them via tool calls — now open in a full image viewer with navigation, zoom, pan, and conversation-turn grouping. The viewer is also available from the Explorer right-click menu for image files. Both imageCarousel.chat.enabled and imageCarousel.explorerContextMenu.enabled are on by default in 1.113.
GitHub announced on March 25 that from April 24 onward, interaction data from Copilot Free, Pro, and Pro+ users will be used to train AI models unless users opt out. Data includes accepted outputs, code snippets shown to the model, cursor context, comments, file names, and chat interactions. Copilot Business and Enterprise users are not affected.
The March 27 CLI release adds a timeline picker to /rewind and double-Esc — you can now roll back to any point in conversation history, not just the previous snapshot. CLI startup is also faster due to V8 compile cache reducing parse and compile time on repeated invocations. MCP registry lookups are more reliable with automatic retries and request timeouts.
/rewind and select exactly the conversation checkpoint you want to return to — surgical rollback, not just one step back.Released March 26, this update opens the model picker in full-screen view with inline reasoning effort adjustment using arrow keys. The model display header shows the active reasoning effort level (e.g. "high") next to the model name. /allow-all (/yolo) now supports on, off, and show subcommands. MCP servers defined in .mcp.json at the git root now start correctly.
Also in the March 27 release: MCP servers can now request LLM inference (model sampling) with user approval via a new review prompt. This allows MCP tools to use Copilot's AI capabilities directly inside their own workflows, unlocking a new class of tool-driven AI interactions where external tools can ask the model questions as part of their operation.
The March 2026 Power Platform update brings Microsoft 365 Copilot directly into model-driven Power Apps via a side pane. Developers and users can ask Copilot to summarize table data, visualize what is active, recap record history, and reference related content — all from within the app. Copilot can also invoke specialized agents (including custom org agents) from the same pane and take actions like drafting documents or scheduling meetings.
Copilot Studio's ability to connect agents to external data via custom MCP servers — currently in public preview — reaches general availability in April 2026. Organizations can connect any Copilot Studio agent to external databases, APIs, and internal tools without writing custom connectors. The companion feature allowing MCP-compliant tools in agent workflows reaches preview in April and GA in October.
For enterprise teams on IntelliJ and JetBrains IDEs: custom agents, sub-agents, and plan agent are now generally available. Agent hooks — which run custom commands at key agent lifecycle events like userPromptSubmitted, preToolUse, and postToolUse — are in public preview. Auto-approve for MCP tools is now configurable at both server and tool level. Requires enabling "Editor preview features" in Copilot Business or Enterprise admin settings.
preToolUse before every file edit the agent makes.The community crossed 50,000 members this week, with GitHub and Microsoft engineers joining a live AMA. Key clarification from the team: the Copilot SDK is MIT-licensed and you can bundle the CLI for personal use, internal tools, or basic web projects without commercial licensing. Commercial products require contacting GitHub. The premium request model is staying for now, with no current plans for per-token billing.
A detailed work log showing a developer who built a personal AI assistant daemon ("Max") running 24/7 on their local machine using the GitHub Copilot SDK. The assistant handles coding tasks, file management, and orchestrates worker sessions. Key engineering challenge: worker sessions were never being destroyed (~400 MB RSS each), causing overnight out-of-memory crashes — fixed by adding explicit session lifecycle management.
A hands-on session showing how to use Copilot agent mode inside VS Code to generate and refactor GitHub Actions workflows for a .NET app, deploy to Azure with OpenID Connect, and use MCP to bring GitHub issue and PR context into the dev flow. Demonstrates creating custom DevOps agents specialized for workflow optimization and best practices.
The single most time-sensitive action this week is checking your data policy settings. If you are on Copilot Pro or Pro+, GitHub will begin using your interaction data — including code snippets, accepted completions, and chat inputs — to train models starting April 24, unless you opt out. Go to your GitHub account settings, navigate to Privacy, and disable "Allow GitHub to use my data to improve GitHub Copilot." Takes 30 seconds and protects your codebase from being part of the training corpus. Copilot Business and Enterprise users are not affected.