VS Code 1.141 Wants to Manage Your Agents

For the last century, VS Code has been the default editor. That's about to change.

Nah. Just kidding.

AI features have been there for a while, but now they've reorganized the interface around agents. These are the newest additions.

Multi-Session Grid Layout

The star of the show: the Agents window. You can run multiple agent sessions in a grid, drag them into horizontal or vertical splits, resize panes, and maximize to focus. Got three agents working on three different tasks? You can watch them all instead of alt-tabbing.

Cross-Platform Sandboxing

Windows, macOS, and Linux all get controls that limit what files and network resources an agent can access. It's meant to reduce the fallout from model mistakes, prompt injection, and untrusted dependencies. The Windows version is still experimental and opt-in, with a bypass that defaults to allowing unsandboxed commands if approved.

External Session Handoff

Chat handoff is in. Convos started in the Copilot CLI, the GitHub Copilot app, or the Codex CLI will now be auto-detected, and you can continue any work without reloading. A Codex chat from the terminal can continue in VS Code with full history, then move back to ChatGPT later. The session doesn't end when you close the window.

Worktree Cleanup

And a small win: a new "Chat: Open Worktree Cleanup" command. It'll list inactive agent session worktrees, show their size, and let you delete them. You can also set automatic cleanup for sessions whose pull requests have already merged. It's a useful way to get back the disk space all the agents eat.

Useful changes, nothing too crazy. Just a peek into where Microsoft thinks software development is headed.