Microsoft has released Visual Studio Code 1.130, an update to the code editor that brings several improvements to the Agents window, along with enhancements to the agent host and the terminal.

VS Code 1.130 was released on July 22, one week after VS Code 1.129. Developers can access the release for Windows, Linux, or Mac from code.visualstudio.com.

With the new release, the Agents window gets updates that make it easier to review changes and manage chats. File-level diff statistics help users assess the size of each file’s changes when scanning a multi-file diff. The window also gets a more compact multi-file diff that makes it easier to review changes, Microsoft said. The Agents window is a dedicated window in VS Code that lets users run and track multiple agent sessions in parallel across their projects, without opening each workspace in a separate window.

Also with VS Code 1.130, assisted permissions for agent tool calls are available in the agent host. With assisted permissions, the LLM evaluates the risk of each tool call and decides whether the tool can run or should require the user’s approval. The setting to enable assisted permissions is chat.assistedPermissions.enabled. In another agent host improvement, quick chats running on the agent host now use compact, single-line rows in the sessions list. Regular sessions retain a second line with change statistics, status, and timestamps.

VS Code users now can open file links from Git diff output in the terminal when Git’s diff.mnemonicPrefix option is enabled. VS Code recognizes prefixes such as i/ for the index and w/ for the working tree, and removes the prefix from the link target so the correct file opens. When mnemonic prefixes are enabled, VS Code also recognizes the numeric prefixes produced by git diff --no-index.

Timestamps for chat requests and responses now are displayed when users hover over the message toolbar. You can disable this through the chat.verbose setting.

Microsoft has released Visual Studio Code 1.129, an update to its free, popular code editor that features a dedicated agent host and an editor panel in the Agents window. The updated editor also allows users to run terminal commands from chat prompts with a !prefix and offers a preview of a modern UI for the workbench.

Released July 15, VS Code 1.129 can be downloaded from code.visualstudio.com for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Microsoft is rearchitecting how agent sessions work in VS Code around the agent host — a dedicated process that runs agent harnesses such as Claude, Copilot, and Codex, based on the Agent Host Protocol (AHP). Since a session lives in its own process, the same session can be connected to and rendered from multiple VS Code windows at once. The agent host’s Copilot agent is powered by the Copilot SDK, which means that its behavior and functionality is aligned with the Copilot CLI, the standalone GitHub Copilot app, and other Copilot products. The agent host is being rolled out to users in the editor window and the Agents window. It’s enabled through the chat.agentHost.enabled setting.

The Agents window shows conversation with an agent next to a detail area for the files and changes it produces. This release introduces a redesigned editor panel that brings the editor and the detail area together into one docked pane with a shared tab bar, so reviewing an agent’s work feels like working in the main editor instead of switching between separate panels.

Other new features and improvements in VS Code 1.129:

• Users now can prefix chat messages with a ! to run their contents as terminal commands. This works in agent host sessions, both in the editor and in the Agents window.
• Developers can now use Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) models in the Agents window when selecting the Copilot harness running on the agent host.
• Developers can preview a modernized VS Code UI that updates the look and feel of the editor workbench. This is currently an experimental feature that can be enabled with the workbench.experimental.modernUI setting.

VS Code 1.129 follows Visual Studio Code 1.128, released July 13. An update, VS Code 1.129.1, fixes three bugs including remote agent hosts failing to start.