The New Agents Window in VS Code | LIVE169

Harald Kirschner walks through the new Agents window in Visual Studio Code, focusing on how it improves visibility across agent sessions, supports multi-workspace workflows, and reduces cost through token optimization and automatic model routing.

Overview

The session introduces a new Agents window experience in VS Code aimed at making agent sessions easier to manage when working across multiple projects and workspaces.

Key themes covered:

• Agents window purpose: a dedicated place to manage and monitor multiple projects and agent sessions.
• Multi-workspace support: positioning the Agents window as part of VS Code’s workflow for handling more than one workspace/project at a time.
• Extensibility and configuration: discussion and demo notes around extensibility and relevant settings (including Git-related settings).
• Remote access: use of VS Code Dev Tunnels for remote connectivity.
• Session visibility and context switching: addressing the friction of switching context between different agent sessions.
• Customization hooks: examples of customization, including hooks that can surface or speak task summaries.
• Cost and efficiency improvements:
  • Token optimization work shipping across recent releases
  • Auto model routing to reduce token usage/cost while keeping sessions effective

Resources

• https://aka.ms/VSCode/Agentswindow
• https://aka.ms/VSCode/Learn
• https://aka.ms/VSCode/TTCompression

Speakers

• Harald Kirschner
• Burke Holland