GitHub Copilot in VS Code v1.143

GitHub Copilot in VS Code v1.143 was released on .

Summary

VS Code 1.143 is here: Copilot harness is now the default, you can compare models side by side, and big chats open much faster. Curious what else changed?

Release Context

Shipped around the same time

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Release Notes

Agents Copilot harness as the default The Copilot harness is now the default for new sessions in VS Code. It's our latest harness, built on the Copilot SDK, a shared foundation that helps align behavior, capabilities, and improvements across Copilot products. When you start a new session, Copilot in the harness picker indicates that the session uses the Copilot harness: In VS Code, you can keep Copilot harness sessions running in the background and access them from both the VS Code editor window and the Agents window. These sessions run through the Agent Host Setting: setting(sessions.chat.compareAgents.enabled) (Agents window only) Compare how different models and harnesses approach the same coding task. Run attempts in parallel, review their results, and combine ideas into one solution. To get started, enable setting(sessions.chat.compareAgents.enabled) in the Agents window, then select Compare Models in the model picker. Choose the approaches to compare: Select two or more models to attempt your task independently. You can mix Copilot, Claude, and Codex harnesses and configure differen... Tab shortcuts in an empty side pane When you closed every tab in the Agents window side pane, the editor area was left blank, and you had to find the Add Tab (+) menu to get back to your session's changes or files. The empty editor area now lists the tabs you can add, such as Changes, Files, Browser, and Search, each with its icon and keyboard shortcut. Select an entry to open that tab. If you have a canvas extension installed, a Canvas entry lists the available canvases. When you switch to a sessio... Session Activity Bar (Experimental) Sessions: setting(sessions.showSessionActivityBar), setting(sessions.sessionActivityBar.showLayoutActions) The Session Activity Bar brings a session's Changes, Files, Browser, and available canvases next to the side pane, keeping these editors and artifacts visually connected to where they open. You can still open session artifacts from the pills at the top of the session. The Session Activity Bar is a slim vertical strip of icons at the right edge of the active chat. Select an icon to open that tab in the side pane. If the side... Find and create files from the empty Files tab (Experimental) Setting: setting(sessions.experimental.emptyFileEditorActions) In the Agents window, the Files tab was blank when no file was open, so you had to switch to the Files view to find or create a file in your session's folder. When you enable setting(sessions.experimental.emptyFileEditorActions), the empty Files tab shows a search box and a New File action. The search works like Quick Open (kb(workbench.action.quickOpe... Improved performance when opening large chats Opening a long Agent Host chat in the Agents window used to freeze the window for up to half a minute while the chat's history was restored. In this release, history is restored in small slices instead of one long blocking task, so the window stays responsive. Opening, switching back to, and reloading large chats is significantly faster. | Scenario | Chat | Time to open: 1.142 → 1.143 | Window unresponsive: 1.142 → 1.143 | |---|---|---|---| | Cold open | Chat A (~1,150 reques... Reclaim storage from inactive worktrees (Experimental) Setting: setting(chat.agentSessions.sessionStorageCleanupSuggestion.enabled) (Agents window only) Worktrees are very useful for letting agents work on multiple features simultaneously without interfering with each other's changes. Over time, inactive worktrees can accumulate and consume significant disk space. Run Chat: Open Worktree Cleanup from the Command Palette to see how much disk space inactive agent session worktrees use and remove the ones you no longer need. Filter sessions by how long they have been inactive,... Models Run Copilot models on your device (Experimental) Laptops such as the new Surface Laptop Ultra, powered by NVIDIA RTX Spark with up to 128 GB of unified memory, have enough GPU memory to run a capable coding model locally. On-device models let you use that hardware with Copilot: download MAI Code 1.1 Flash from the new On This Device tab in the model picker and chat with it in Copilot harness sessions, with model processing on your device. VS Code downloads and manages the model for you. Responses that run on y... Bring your own OpenAI model to Voice Mode (Preview) Settings: setting(agents.voice.enabled), setting(agents.voice.useBYOKVoiceModel) Use your own OpenAI API key and live model for voice-driven coding conversations instead of the hosted Voice Mode backend. Add your OpenAI key in the Language Models editor, enable setting(agents.voice.enabled), and set setting(agents.voice.useBYOKVoiceModel) to a live model ID, like gpt-live-1 that your key can access. Chat Open canvases from the chat menu (Preview) Setting: setting(chat.canvases.enabled) VS Code 1.142 introduced canvases (Preview), which are shared, interactive surfaces for collaborating with agents. In this release, you can now open available canvases from New Chat (+) > Canvas in the editor window, without asking Copilot to open them. When canvas support is enabled and you have canvas extensions installed, the submenu appears after your first message in a Copilot harness session. You can also open canvases from the + menu in the Agents window. Learn about install... See output from detached background shells In [Copilot harness sessions, the agent can start commands that need to continue running after it responds in a detached background shell. A dev server or a file watcher are common examples of such commands. Previously, you couldn't view the output of detached background shells, for example to check whether a dev server started successfully. Detached shells now stream their output like attached shells. Select the Background Shells pill, and then select a detached shell to wat... Enterprise Managed model defaults New Copilot harness chats use your organization's managed defaults, even when you configure setting(chat.defaultModel) to another preference. The model picker and setting now explain which defaults apply. You can still change models and supported options per chat. For example, the following configuration defaults new chats to Auto with the Intelligence tier in enterprise-managed settings: json { "model": "auto", "autoTier": "intel... Fewer approval prompts for managed tools Assisted permissions no longer prompt again for eligible managed tool requests they approve. One-time limits, managed denials, and sandbox restrictions still apply. VS Code setup Install GitHub Copilot CLI with VS Code We now make it easier for you to get started with the GitHub Copilot CLI by letting you install it with the VS Code installer. Note: Organizations can choose to disable this option via the Managed AI Settings. Windows The VS Code installer on Windows now includes an option to install GitHub Copilot CLI. If you already have it installed, this option is not presented. Find more details in...

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