The new Agents window in VS Code provides a centralized, task-focused interface to efficiently manage multiple AI agents across various projects, supporting customization, session isolation, and seamless integration with local and remote environments. Designed with a modern, accessible UI, it enhances productivity by offering features like integrated browsing, task management, and theme customization, while evolving based on community feedback and plans for browser-based access.
The video introduces the new Agents window feature in the latest VS Code release, designed to help users manage multiple AI agents across different projects more efficiently. Unlike the traditional VS Code interface, which is optimized for code-first workflows within a single project, the Agents window offers a task-first, agent-centric experience. It acts as a companion window within VS Code, allowing users to orchestrate, monitor, and interact with various agents from one centralized interface. Users can access this window via a dedicated button or command, and it supports syncing themes and settings with the main VS Code window or customizing them independently.
The Agents window interface is organized to enhance productivity, featuring a sessions list grouped by workspace on the left, options to start new sessions in the middle, and detailed views of agent outputs and file changes on the right. It supports working with local projects, remote repositories on GitHub, and connections through dev tunnels or SSH. Users can choose different agent harnesses such as Copilot CLI, Claude, or Copilot Cloud agents. The window also isolates sessions using work trees to prevent conflicts between parallel workflows, making it easier to manage multiple tasks simultaneously.
One of the key highlights is the integration of customization options for agents, including skills and instructions that tailor agent behavior to specific workflows. These customizations are directly editable within the Agents window, promoting a seamless and efficient agent-first development process. The window also includes features like an integrated browser for previewing changes, task management tools, and the ability to provide feedback to agents for iterative improvements. Additionally, users can mark sessions as done and archive or retrieve them later, helping maintain an organized workspace.
The design of the Agents window reflects a modern, lightweight aesthetic with more spacing, rounded corners, and subtle animations to create a friendly and approachable user experience. The UI emphasizes typographic clarity over abstract icons to ease users into the new multi-agent workflow paradigm. The team has also developed specific theme tokens for the Agents window, allowing users and theme authors to customize its appearance independently from the main VS Code window. Accessibility remains a priority, with support for screen readers, keyboard navigation, and color contrast compliance.
The feature emerged from both community feedback and internal team needs as the use of multiple agents became more prevalent. The team recognized the limitations of managing agents solely within the traditional editor interface and sought to create a dedicated space optimized for agent orchestration. The Agents window is part of an evolving ecosystem, with ongoing improvements and plans for browser-based access via vscode.dev/agents, enabling users to manage agents on the go. The developers encourage community feedback through GitHub and social channels to refine and expand the feature further.