VS Code Update: Collaboration, Markdown Editing, and Agent Permissions

You need to be turning Agent Customizations into a package ecosystem. And that's what happeining in Visual Studio Code now with a new Marketplace UI poping under the customization modal. But - the interesting part isn't the new Marketplace UI. It's the fact that skills, plugins and MCP servers are starting to get the same primitives extensions have had for years: - source and registry identity -versioned installs -provenance -install records -repair -uninstall -separation between what's installed and what's simply sitting on disk That last one is particularly important. A skill called foo sitting in .github/skills is no longer necessarily the same thing as foo@1.2.0 installed from a marketplace. VS Code keeps a machine-local record of what was actually installed, where it came from and which version it was. This is the beginning of the shift from: "agent customization = some Markdown files in my repo" to: "agent customization = a managed package." And the architecture already goes beyond a single public store. Discover can aggregate GitHub's public feed, MCP galleries, configured plugin registries and eventually authenticated Copilot Connectors. This is very close to what I think the agent ecosystem needs: an npm-like distribution layer for agent primitives. Skills, MCPs, instructions, hooks and agents shouldn't just be copied around as files forever. They need identity, versioning, provenance, governance and eventually dependency management and telemetry. The marketplace UI is just the visible part. The more interesting change is underneath it. I really hope they start using APM (agent package manager) as the underlying system

🚀 The latest VS Code release makes large agent session lists faster and easier to manage and lets you run agent sessions in Dev Containers, both locally and on remote hosts. Here’s what’s new: 🤖 Run agent sessions inside your project’s Dev Container, locally or on SSH, Tunnel, and WSL hosts. 📊 Load large session lists faster, fit more sessions on screen, and rename sessions and chats in place. 📄 Spot wrapped lines at a glance with word wrap indicators. ⌨️ Keep typing without duplicate closing brackets. 🔗 Explore the latest updates: https://aka.ms/VSCode/139 Happy coding! 💙

Microsoft has rearchitected C# Dev Kit for .NET 11, consolidating six managed processes into a single Native AOT server and adding project caching, faster incremental builds and lower memory use.C# Dev Kit 11.0 also adds richer editing for MSBuild project files and a new C# Doctor for diagnosing environment and configuration problems. The new version is available now in the Visual Studio Code pre-release channel.

🚀 **Shaunebu.MAUI.Navigation 1.0.0 is officially released!** 🎉 After extensive development, testing, debugging, and validation, I'm excited to announce the **first stable release of Shaunebu.MAUI.Navigation**, along with **version 1.0.1 of its Visual Studio extension**! 💻 🔹 **What's included?** 📦 **Five NuGet packages** covering navigation infrastructure, Roslyn analyzers, code fixes, source generators, and debugging capabilities. 🧭 **Navigation tooling** designed to improve the development experience when building .NET MAUI applications. 🔍 **Visual Studio Navigation Session Inspector**, providing tooling to inspect and diagnose navigation behavior during development. ⚡ **Roslyn-powered tooling** to help detect issues and improve navigation-related code. 🧪 **Release quality and validation:** - 31 audit findings passed, with one documented and accepted exception. - 238 VSIX automated tests passed. - Seven Azure DevOps CI pipelines successfully validated. - Stable NuGet packages released as **1.0.0**. - Visual Studio extension updated to **1.0.1**. This release represents an important milestone in building reliable, developer-focused tooling for the **.NET MAUI ecosystem**. 💡 The goal is simple: make navigation easier to develop, inspect, debug, and maintain. 🔗 **GitHub:** https://lnkd.in/gTCCBK4A 📦 **NuGet:** https://lnkd.in/gnbjb9fn A huge amount of engineering effort went into getting this release ready, and I'm looking forward to continuing to improve it. Feedback, contributions, and suggestions are always welcome! 🙌 #DotNetMAUI #DotNet #CSharp #VisualStudio #NuGet #Roslyn #OpenSource #SoftwareEngineering #MobileDevelopment

Stack Overflows 2026 Developer Survey puts VS Code first in editor usage and Visual Studio third, narrowly behind Notepad++. GitHub Copilot ranks second among coding agents and assistants, behind Claude Code, while ASP.NET Core places fourth in web technology usage. The results offer a snapshot of Microsoft and GitHub tools across distinct respondent groups, with multiple selections allowed.

5 VS Code Keyboard Shortcuts Every Developer Should Know One of the simplest ways to improve your development workflow is to become more efficient with the tools you already use. Visual Studio Code (VS Code) offers keyboard shortcuts that help developers reduce repetitive actions, navigate files, and edit code without constantly reaching for the mouse. Here are five shortcuts worth learning: 1. Shift + Alt + Up/Down — Duplicate a line Quickly duplicate a line of code above or below your current position. This is useful when working with repeated HTML elements or similar code structures. 2. Ctrl + D — Select the next matching occurrence Select the next occurrence of a word or text selection so you can edit multiple matching instances efficiently. 3. Ctrl + / — Toggle line comments** Comment or uncomment a line of code without manually typing comment symbols. This is useful when testing ideas or temporarily disabling code. 4. Alt + Up/Down — Move a line Move the current line or selected lines up or down without needing to cut and paste them manually. 5. Ctrl + P — Quickly open a file Search for and open files by name, helping you navigate larger projects without repeatedly browsing through folders. Note: These are the default Windows/Linux shortcuts. Some shortcuts and behaviors may vary by operating system, keyboard layout, and VS Code configuration. Why do these shortcuts matter? Productivity in software development isn't only about writing more code. It's also about reducing unnecessary friction, maintaining focus, and making everyday tasks easier to complete. You don't need to memorize every shortcut at once. Start with the ones that fit your daily workflow, practice them consistently, and gradually build your own efficient development routine. At SIARA DIGITAL, we believe that understanding technology also means learning how to use it effectively. Your turn: Which VS Code shortcut has made the biggest difference to your workflow? Share it in the comments. Someone else might discover a better way to work. Follow SIARA DIGITAL for more practical developer tips, technology education, and insights into digital solutions. #SoftwareDevelopment #VSCode #WebDevelopment #DeveloperProductivity #Technology

Visual Studio’s story is really a story about how developer tooling evolves with the industry. 💻 From a 1997 boxed IDE to today’s AI-assisted, 64-bit release train, Microsoft keeps reshaping the same product for new ways of building software. A few takeaways: - Visual Studio unified language tools, debugging, and project management - Roslyn, Git, and extensions made the IDE far more powerful - VS 2017 introduced workload-based installs to reduce bloat - VS 2022 went 64-bit and improved large-solution performance - VS Code now owns the lightweight, cross-platform workflow If you want the full journey — and how VS and VS Code now complement each other — read the post. 👉 https://lnkd.in/evEhQjQG #VisualStudio #VSCode #Microsoft #dotnet #SoftwareDevelopment

Git Upstream Sync Notifier — VS Code extension. Tells you when your branch falls behind main, who pushed, and which files will conflict before you merge. - Fork-aware: compares against the parent repo, not your fork - Never merges on its own - Conflicts open in VS Code's merge editor https://lnkd.in/gFCFjR2x https://lnkd.in/gDbifaH4

Visual Studio Code is bringing Copilot Canvases into the Agent experience. The concept is similar to Canvases in the GitHub Copilot app: a shared interactive surface where both the human and the agent can work on the same artifact. Think dashboards, Kanban boards, plans, triage boards, etc. But there is an interesting difference under the hood. VS Code isn't waiting for Canvases to become part of the canonical Agent Host Protocol. It is shipping a VS Code-specific transport first, which lets them experiment with the primitive without committing the whole AHP ecosystem to the API yet. And you can actually create one yourself. Start an agent session and run: /create-canvas Then describe what you want, for example: `Create an agentic Kanban canvas where I can create, assign and move cards, and where you can also update the board.` The agent builds the canvas and opens it in the Sessions UI. You can then keep iterating on the UI, state and capabilities from the agent. For a team canvas, it can live under .github/extensions. Personal canvases can live under ~/.copilot/extensions.

This is one of the most powerful reasons why I switched to GitHub Copilot App (and I am happy this now available in #vscode) Many people do not understand why a canvas is so cool and think it is yet another UI distraction in the tool. And all these games, dashboards, whatever are IMHO misleading on the real advantage of a canvas extension. The main benefit of a canvas is that you can define your own message channel from UI to the agent. This means that you can eg create on-the-fly (!!) your own UI studio to render your current web component that you are working on. You might then drag and drop elements, change styles etc and bring these changes as a feedback back to the agent so it is able "to see" on the DOM. Without loading the whole app. Opening the browser and using the debug tools. Or you could render your video you are working on in the canvas, mark keyframes and bring that back with a prompt to the agent. Anything you can imagine is possible. A canvas is NOT an UI element that will help you bridge the boredom to wait for the result of your agent. It is a feedback loop based on UI (!). #github #copilot #aicoding #ai #development