News

New Agents Panel Brings Copilot Coding Tasks to Visual Studio and VS Code

• By David Ramel
• 08/21/2025

GitHub has expanded its Copilot coding agent with a new agents panel, giving Visual Studio and VS Code users a centralized way to launch and track AI-driven coding tasks directly alongside their existing workflows.

The Copilot coding agent is GitHub's step beyond autocomplete and chat suggestions. Announced in May 2025, it allows developers to delegate entire coding tasks -- such as adding features, fixing bugs, extending tests, or improving documentation -- instead of guiding Copilot line by line. Once assigned, the agent spins up a secure development environment powered by GitHub Actions, works in the background, and submits its progress as commits to a draft pull request for human review before anything is merged.

Since its launch, GitHub has expanded and refined the coding agent. Improvements include cross-IDE support, with availability now in VS Code, Visual Studio, and JetBrains IDEs; smarter agent behavior through integration with the Model Context Protocol for extended context; and broader availability across GitHub Copilot Pro, GitHub Copilot Pro+, GitHub Copilot Business and GitHub Copilot Enterprise plans. Performance and efficiency have also been upgraded, with GitHub noting that agent sessions now consume fewer premium requests while providing richer validation tools, including a built-in browser for testing.

For developers working in Microsoft's ecosystems, the Copilot coding agent changes how routine coding work gets done. Instead of relying solely on inline suggestions or GitHub Issues, developers can now delegate background tasks -- like bug fixes, refactors, or test coverage -- from inside Visual Studio, VS Code, or GitHub.com. VS Code users get the most complete integration, with both task delegation and in-IDE tracking via the GitHub Pull Requests extension, while Visual Studio developers can initiate tasks through Copilot Chat and review results on GitHub. The new agents panel acts as a cross-surface control center, tying these experiences together and making Copilot function more like a team member than an autocomplete tool.

The New Agents Panel
GitHub on Aug. 19 introduced the agents panel, a lightweight overlay available on every page of GitHub.com that serves as "your mission control center for agentic workflows on GitHub." Instead of requiring developers to open a GitHub issue or switch to their IDE, the panel allows them to describe a goal in natural language, select the relevant repository, and have Copilot coding agent begin work immediately. Developers can then monitor active tasks, review status in real time, and jump into draft pull requests when ready.

For VS Code users, this builds on existing functionality that lets them "delegate tasks to Copilot and track running tasks with the GitHub Pull Requests extension." In practice, that means VS Code remains the most fully integrated environment, where tasks can be both launched and followed without leaving the editor. Meanwhile, Visual Studio users and devs using JetBrains IDES can ask Copilot to open a pull request. Visual Studio users can initiate Copilot coding agent tasks via Copilot Chat, but GitHub has not indicated that task monitoring is available inside the IDE.

The panel also expands how tasks can be initiated. While developers can still assign GitHub Issues, they can now start free-form tasks from anywhere on GitHub.com (via the agents panel), in VS Code, in Visual Studio, or via MCP-enabled tools. On GitHub Mobile, you can assign issues to Copilot. Sample prompts offered by GitHub include "Add integration tests for LoginController," "Refactor WidgetGenerator for better code reuse," and "Add a dark mode/light mode switcher."

Another notable change is the ability to manage multiple tasks in parallel. The announcement highlights that developers can, for example, request "Add unit test coverage for utils.go" alongside "Add unit test coverage for helpers.go" and have Copilot work on both concurrently. This supports more efficient delegation while preserving oversight through GitHub's pull request review process, where developers retain final approval of all changes.