Visual Studio Blog

Microsoft Build kicks off today in San Francisco, June 2 and 3. If you cannot make it in person, the sessions are streaming online for free, and I want to walk you through what we are announcing for Visual Studio this week. One idea tie most of it together. Code is an asset, not just The post What’s Coming Next in Visual Studio: Our Microsoft Build 2026 Announcements appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

There’s a particular rhythm to good development work: you think, you try, you check, you adjust. This month’s Visual Studio update leans into that rhythm. Whether you’re sketching an approach with the Plan agent before touching a single file, reviewing a wave of changes across many files, or fine-tuning the context Copilot has to work The post Visual Studio May Update – Plan, Review, Refine appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

You ask Copilot to tackle something big, it gets to work, and a dozen file changes later you realize you had a completely different approach in mind. The code isn’t wrong… it just isn’t what you were going for. Last year, we introduced planning as a feature in Agent mode to help with exactly this. The post Plan Before You Build: Introducing the Plan agent in Visual Studio appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

If you lead a development team, you already know the pattern. You approve the travel, your developers attend a great conference, they come back energized, and then the work resumes exactly as it was. The ideas don’t survive contact with the backlog. This July at VSLive! @ Microsoft HQ in Redmond, we’re trying to change The post VSLive! Microsoft AI Hackathon 2026: Send Your Team Home With Working Code appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

Visual Studio now supports Agent Skills, which are reusable instruction sets that teach Copilot agents how to handle specific tasks like running a build pipeline, generating boilerplate, or following your team’s coding standards. Define a skill once, and the agent applies it automatically whenever it’s relevant. Creating a skill You can create a skill directly The post Agent Skills in Visual Studio: Teach Copilot How Your Team Works appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

TypeScript 7 Beta Now Enabled by Default in Visual Studio 2026 18.6 Insiders 3 In Visual Studio 2026 18.6 Insiders 3 we have updated the built-in TypeScript SDK to TypeScript 7 Beta (native preview). The TypeScript SDK provides the compiler and language service used for TypeScript and JavaScript support in Visual Studio. This update impacts any The post TypeScript 7 Beta Now Enabled by Default in Visual Studio 2026 18.6 Insiders 3 appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

Starting in Visual Studio 18.5, you can create and build Visual Studio extensions (VSIX) using an officially supported SDK-style project. This brings VSIX projects into the modern build and deployment pipeline, improving incremental build performance and making the build → deploy → debug workflow more reliable. Install the Visual Studio extension development workload to get The post SDK-Style Support for Extension Projects appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio is becoming more agentic with every release. This update brings cloud agent integration front and center, letting you start remote coding sessions without leaving the IDE. The post Visual Studio April Update – Cloud Agent Integration appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

In March 2026, developers came together at VS Live! Las Vegas for a full week of technical learning, hands-on exploration, and a lot of great conversations about where software development is headed next. From AI-assisted development to modern .NET, cloud-native apps, and developer productivity, one thing was clear: the pace of change is not slowing The post From AI to .NET: 20 VS Live! Las Vegas Sessions You Can Watch Now appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

Azure MCP tools now ship built into Visual Studio 2022 — no extension required Azure MCP tools are now built into Visual Studio 2022 as part of the Azure development workload — no separate extension to find, install, or update. You can enable over 230 tools across 45 Azure services directly in GitHub Copilot Chat The post Azure MCP tools now ship built into Visual Studio 2022 — no extension required appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.