The VS Code Live event celebrated the v1.107 release, highlighting major enhancements such as a unified agent management interface, the “Bring Your Own Key” feature for integrating diverse AI models, and improved AI-assisted development workflows. The event also showcased new extensions, updates to the Model Client Protocol, and a first-party Python driver for SQL Server, emphasizing the team’s commitment to open source, community collaboration, and continuous innovation.
The VS Code Live event celebrated the release of version 1.107, marking the last update of the year for Visual Studio Code. Olivia, a VS Code advocate, hosted the event alongside Kai Metzel, the head of the VS Code engineering team. They reflected on the significant advancements made throughout the year, including the introduction and rapid evolution of agent mode, AI capabilities, and enhancements to the terminal experience. Kai emphasized the team’s commitment to open source, continuous iteration through monthly plans, and the importance of using VS Code internally to refine the product based on real-world feedback.
A major highlight of the release is the improved agentic experience, showcased by Bridget, a product manager on the VS Code team. The update introduces a unified interface for managing different types of agents—local, background, and cloud—allowing users to seamlessly switch between sessions, archive conversations, and delegate tasks. Background agents now support isolated Git work trees to prevent conflicts, and cloud agents can create branches and pull requests automatically, facilitating collaborative workflows. These enhancements aim to make AI-assisted development more powerful and flexible within the editor.
Logan presented the “Bring Your Own Key” feature, which allows users to integrate various language models beyond the default Copilot offerings. This includes models from providers like Cerebras and Hugging Face, enabling developers to experiment with different AI models directly within VS Code. The model management interface lets users filter models by capabilities such as vision support or tool integration and customize their experience by hiding unused models. This extensibility supports a broad range of AI workflows and empowers users to tailor their coding assistant to their specific needs.
Selena from Hugging Face demonstrated their inference provider extension, which leverages the “Bring Your Own Key” functionality to bring open-weight models into VS Code Copilot Chat. This integration offers users access to a wide variety of state-of-the-art models hosted on multiple inference providers, balancing cost and performance. The extension is independently maintained, allowing rapid updates and new features without waiting for VS Code releases. Selena showcased how developers can use these models for real coding tasks, highlighting the flexibility and power of combining open-source AI models with VS Code’s AI tooling.
The event also featured demos of the latest Model Client Protocol (MCP) updates by Connor, who highlighted new features like custom icons for MCP servers, URL mode elicitation for interactive inputs, and improved handling of long-running tasks. David Levi from the Microsoft SQL Server drivers team showcased the new first-party Python driver for SQL Server, emphasizing ease of use, seamless authentication via VS Code, and integration with modern Python tools like UV and Jupyter Notebooks. The release stream concluded with gratitude to the vibrant VS Code community and contributors, underscoring the collaborative spirit that drives the editor’s ongoing innovation.