| VS Code 1.98 Increases AI Assistance |
| Written by Kay Ewbank |
| Monday, 17 March 2025 |
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The latest update of Visual Studio Code is now available with the main improvements related to its use of GitHub Copilot. The update also adds a preview of Intellisense completion in the terminal. Visual Studio Code is Microsoft's open source code editor that shares part of a name, but not much else, with full Visual Studio. It is open source under a MIT license and development has been conducted on GitHub.
The changes and improvements to this release are largely focused on what you can do with GitHub Copilot within VS Code. The enhancements include a preview of Copilot Vision, which developers can use to attach and interact with images in chat prompts; and the ability to use custom instructions to tailor Copilot to your needs. Perhaps the most interesting addition is the new vision support in this version of Copilot Chat that lets developers attach images and interact with images in chat prompts. The examples given include attaching a screenshot of an error then asking Copilot to help you resolve the issue. Another suggested use is to attach some UI mockup and let Copilot provide some HTML and CSS to implement the mockup. The agent mode that was introduced last month for Copilot Edits in VS Code Insiders has been made more widely available, and is now being rolled out gradually in VS Code Stable. In agent mode, Copilot can automatically search your workspace for relevant context, edit files, check them for errors, and run terminal commands (with your permission) to complete a task end-to-end. The improvements mean that terminal commands are now shown inline, so you can keep track of which commands were run, and you can edit the suggested terminal command in the chat response before running it. VS Code Insiders are getting notebook support in Copilot Edits as a preview feature. This means developers can now use Copilot to edit notebook files as well as code files. The custom instructions option has also been made generally available. This lets you customize GitHub Copilot to provide chat responses and code suggestions to the way you and your team work. Several improvements have been made to working with code in GitHub repositories, starting with smoother authentication flows in chat when searching so that the request for permission now appears in the chat rather than in a dialog box. The codebase search option has also been extended with the ability to run tools like text search and file search to pull in additional context from your workspace. Developers can now attach problems and folders as chat context. Still on the Copilot front, there's support for more models to choose from, specifically a preview of GPT 4.5, OpenAI's latest model, for Copilot Enterprise users; and Claude 3.7 Sonnet for all customers on paid Copilot plans. Visual Studio Code 1.98 is available now.
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