This week at GitHub Universe, we’re announcing the Public Preview of the GitHub Copilot prompt-first agent development in the AI Toolkit for Visual Studio Code. With this release, building powerful AI agents is now simpler and faster - no need to wrestle with complex frameworks or orchestrators. Just start with natural language prompts and let GitHub Copilot guide you from concept to working agent code.
Accelerate Agent Development in VS Code
The AI Toolkit embeds agent development workflows directly into Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot, enabling you to transform ideas into production-ready agents within minutes. This unified experience empowers developers and product teams to:
- Select the best model for your agent scenario
- Build and orchestrate agents using Microsoft Agent Framework
- Trace agent behaviors
- Evaluate agent response quality
Select the best model for your scenario
Models are the foundation for building powerful agents. Using the AI Toolkit, you can already explore and experiment with a wide range of local and remote models. Copilot now recommends models tailored to your agent’s needs, helping you make informed choices quickly.
Build and orchestrate agents
Whether you’re creating a single agent or designing a multi-agent workflow, Copilot leverages the latest Microsoft Agent Framework to generate robust agent code. You can initiate agent creation with simple prompts and visualize workflows for greater clarity and control.
Create a single agent using Copilot
Create a multi-agent workflow using Copilot and visualize workflow execution
Trace agent behaviors
As agents become more sophisticated, understanding their actions is crucial. The AI Toolkit enables tracing via Copilot, collecting local traces and displaying detailed agent calls, all within VS Code.
Evaluate agent response quality
Copilot guides you through structured evaluation, recommending metrics and generating test datasets. Integrate evaluations into your CI/CD pipeline for continuous quality assurance and confident deployments.
Get started and share feedback
This release marks a significant step toward making AI agent development easier and more accessible in Visual Studio Code. Try out the AI Toolkit for Visual Studio Code, share your thoughts, and file issues and suggest features on our GitHub repo. Thank you for being a part of this journey with us!
Microsoft