Microsoft has updated Visual Studio Code (VS Code), the most popular programmer’s editor, with Agent HQ alongside numerous agentic coding updates, a preview of TypeScript 7 support, and deprecation of IntelliCode code completion in favor of subscription-based GitHub Copilot.
Agentic coding is the hot thing in AI-assisted development, with the formation of the just-announced Agentic AI Foundation and recent releases from VS Code competitors including Google’s Antigravity and JetBrains Air in preview.
Not wanting to be left behind, VS Code now enables multiple background agents to work concurrently, and introduces Agent HQ as a single place to manage them. Oddly, although “VS Code now includes Agent HQ” is touted as the first new feature in the release notes, the term is not mentioned again. This GitHub post explains that Agent HQ is not a feature, but rather a direction towards integrating agents from multiple vendors into the coding workflow.
The Agent Sessions view in VS Code is part of the Agent HQ experience, though this view is now disabled by default. This example from the official video shows multiple background agents working concurrently, locally and in the cloud.
Earlier this week, an official video presented Agent HQ in VS Code, but the feature shown is the preview of Agent Sessions view. Despite the presenter’s enthusiasm for this, the latest release disables this view by default, because agent sessions are now integrated into Chat. “If you prefer to keep using the standalone view, you can re-enable it via chat.agentSessionsViewLocation,” the release notes state, though adding: “in a future release, we plan to remove the standalone view entirely.”
