Microsoft Unveils Exciting New Visual Studio Feature

Revolutionizing Development: Microsoft’s Copilot and Planning Feature in Visual Studio

In recent years, Microsoft has been making significant strides in enhancing the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within its flagship integrated development environment (IDE), Visual Studio. The momentum has surged with the arrival of Visual Studio 2026, currently available in preview. At the forefront of this innovation is the testing of a groundbreaking feature dubbed Copilot, poised to transform the experience for developers utilizing Visual Studio.

Addressing Complex Development Challenges

While Visual Studio enables developers to employ quick prompts and reusable prompt files to streamline workflows, Microsoft recognizes the limitations of these tools within the context of complex projects. Continuous monitoring and refinement are often necessary, which can be cumbersome for developers. To alleviate these challenges, Microsoft has unveiled a public preview of its innovative Planning feature in Visual Studio.

Enhanced Task Management through Agent Mode

When developers activate Copilot in Agent Mode, the Planning feature will showcase an impressive capability: it can analyze the existing codebase, decompose requests into manageable tasks, and tackle them in a structured, iterative manner. This method not only refines the output but enhances transparency regarding the generated code, empowering developers to gain insights into the underlying processes.

Customized Problem-Solving Approaches

As users engage with this Planning feature, they will notice that Copilot intelligently decides whether to treat a problem as a quick prompt for rapid responses or as a comprehensive multi-step plan. In the case of a multi-step approach, plans will be formatted in Markdown and will convey the progress of the task. Furthermore, these plans will be saved in the %TEMP%\VisualStudio\copilot-vs\ directory for easy reuse across different threads. However, any modifications made to a plan will require re-execution of the prompt to reflect changes, though Microsoft is actively exploring improvements to streamline this process.

Proven Enhancements and Future Developments

During internal testing, Microsoft has noted impressive gains when leveraging the Planning feature with both GPT-5 and Claude Sonnet 4 models, reporting a “15% higher success rate and a resolution of 20% more tasks.” The company is currently validating these improvements against additional models to establish consistent performance trends.

Looking Ahead: Upcoming Enhancements

To further refine the user experience, Microsoft plans to enhance caching processes, improve model reasoning, and bolster contextual understanding within projects. At this time, the Planning feature in Copilot Chat is available for public preview in Visual Studio 2022 version 17.14. It’s worth noting that the rollout is being conducted in stages. If you haven’t yet gained access, navigate to Tools > Options > Copilot > Enable Planning to check availability.

For more information, you can refer to the original announcement here.