Welcome to the February 2026 release of Visual Studio Code. This release makes agents practical for longer-running and more complex tasks, giving you more control and visibility, new ways to extend agents, and smarter session management.
Agent plugins: install prepackaged bundles of skills, tools, and hooks from the Extensions view
Agentic browser tools: let the agent drive the browser to interact with your app and verify its own changes
Session memory: persist plans and guidance across conversation turns
Context compaction: manually compact conversation history to free up context space
Fork a chat session: create a new, independent session that inherits conversation history to explore alternative approaches
Agent Debug panel: get real-time visibility into agent events, tool calls, and loaded customizations
Chat accessibility: use chat to its fullest with screen reader improvements, keyboard navigation, and notification signals
Create agent customizations from chat: generate prompts, skills, agents, and hooks directly from a conversation
Kitty graphics protocol: render high-fidelity images directly in the integrated terminal
For the complete release notes go to Updates on code.visualstudio.com.
Insiders: Want to see new features as soon as possible? You can download the nightly Insiders build and try the latest updates as soon as they are available. And for the latest Visual Studio Code news, updates, and content, follow us on Twitter @code!
Happy Coding!