Jessie Houghton details the new features in Visual Studio 2022’s October 2025 update, focusing on expanded Copilot capabilities, model choices, planning, and Azure Foundry integration for developers.

Visual Studio October 2025 Update: New Models, Memories, Planning, and More

Author: Jessie Houghton
Version: Visual Studio 2022 v17.14

Overview

The October 2025 Visual Studio 2022 update (v17.14) delivers major enhancements for developers working with AI-assisted tooling, especially through GitHub Copilot. With new model integrations, expanded Copilot features, and Azure compatibility, it targets personal and team productivity in codebases of all sizes.

New AI Models

In this release, Visual Studio Copilot Chat now includes Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Claude Haiku 4.5 as model choices. These additions expand your options when choosing an AI assistant, supporting more advanced agentic workflows directly within the chat window.

Copilot Memories: Project-Aware Assistance

Copilot memories enable the AI to learn about your project’s coding standards and your team’s best practices. As you interact in chat:

  • Detection: Copilot recognizes when you correct its code, define standards, or make requests for it to remember preferences.
  • Documentation: It offers to save preferences to:
    • .editorconfig (for coding standards)
    • CONTRIBUTING.md (guidelines, practices)
    • README.md (project overview)
  • Team Impact: Preferences are shared, helping maintain consistency and improve Copilot responses for the whole team.

Built-in Planning for Complex Tasks

Copilot Chat now provides built-in planning for multi-step workflows:

  • Automatic Plan Files: When facing a large problem, Copilot creates a markdown file listing tasks, targeted files, and its intended approach.
  • Real-Time Updates: Progress, blockers, and strategy adjustments are tracked live.
  • Visibility: Plans remain transparent and are scoped to your specific development goals. Plans are temporary unless you explicitly save them to the repo.

Learn more about planning

Custom Instruction Files

You can now fine-tune Copilot’s behavior at the project or folder level using instruction files:

  • Activation: Enable via Tools > Options > GitHub > Copilot > Copilot Chat.
  • Setup: Place .instructions.md files in .github/instructions/ and apply to source code subsets using the applyTo header with glob patterns (e.g., applyTo: "src/**/*.cs").
  • Benefit: Specify coding standards or guidance per folder/file hierarchy. Copilot automatically attaches these file references in relevant chat contexts, ensuring consistency across different parts of your codebase.

Azure Foundry Integration: Bring Your Own Models

The update introduces Azure Foundry integration, letting you use custom AI models with GitHub Copilot Chat for ultimate control over your dev environment.

Enhanced Chat Management

Two new chat commands simplify conversation history:

  • /clear: Start a fresh chat by clearing the current thread.
  • /clearAll: Remove all old threads to declutter chat history.

Community and Feedback

Stay updated with new features and connect with the Visual Studio community via the Visual Studio Hub. Share your experiences or report any issues through the Developer Community.

Summary

These enhancements reinforce Visual Studio’s commitment to supporting developer productivity through deep AI integration, project-aware guidance, and customizable tooling.

This post appeared first on “Microsoft VisualStudio Blog”. Read the entire article here