Multi-chat Claude sessions allow VS Code users to run multiple related conversation threads in one Claude agent session instead of separate top-level sessions.
Visual Studio Code 1.128, the most recent edition of Microsoft’s code editor, adds support for multi-chat agent sessions using Anthropic Claude agents.
Introduced July 8, VS Code 1.28 can be downloaded for Windows, Linux, or Mac from code.visualstudio.com.
With VS Code 1.28, multi-chat agent sessions now support using Anthropic Claude agents. With multiple chats, a session can contain related chats, allowing users to compare approaches, branch from an earlier turn, and run work in parallel. Users can add chats, fork a chat from an existing turn, switch between peer chats, and send turns concurrently. Each chat keeps its own history, title, and model selection, and restores with the parent session after restart, Microsoft said.
VS Code 1.28 also makes Copilot Vision generally available. With Copilot Vision, VS Code users can attach images and PDFs by pasting them into chat, dragging and dropping them, or using the context menu. Images also may be read by the agent via a tool call, Microsoft said.
Also in VS Code 1.28:
- Quick chats allow users to ask a question in the Agents window without opening a workspace first.
- VS Code can contribute OS-level keyboard shortcuts that take effect even if VS Code is not in focus. Users can add
systemWideto a keybinding definition inkeybindings.jsonto make it OS-level. - Developers can configure a location for browser tabs to open via a new setting,
workbench.browser.newTabPlacement. The setting provides three options: to open browser tabs in the active editor group, in a dedicated group to the side, or in a dedicated auxiliary window. - VS Code can contribute OS-level keyboard shortcuts. These shortcuts take effect even if VS Code is not in focus.
- Administrators can configure where GitHub Copilot sends OpenTelemetry (OTel) data, allowing organizations to enforce telemetry flows to an approved collector without each developer setting
OTEL_*environment variables. The managed configuration applies to both the Copilot Chat extension and the agent host process.
