In this video, we walk through the latest improvements to terminal tools for agent sessions: foreground terminal support, better handling of interactive input, progress messages, and smarter background notifications. These updates make working with REPLs, installers, and long‑running commands faster and more seamless.

🔗 Check out the full release notes: https://aka.ms/VSCode/116
 
🔎 Chapters:
00:00 Intro to Terminal Tools for Agent Sessions
00:25 Demo
03:33 Recap
 
🎙️ Featuring: James Montemagno (@JamesMontemagno)
 
📲 Follow VS Code:
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Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/vscode.dev
LinkedIn: https://aka.ms/VSCode/LinkedIn
GitHub: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode
 
#vscode #visualstudiocode #agents

Visual Studio Code is a lightweight and powerful code editor developed by Microsoft, offering built-in support for multiple programming languages, debugging, and extensions. From this resource developers can learn about VSCode's features, extensions, and customization options to enhance their coding productivity and workflow.

Visual Studio Code

VS Code has introduced new terminal agent tools that improve how AI agents interact with the terminal during agentic workflows. Key features include smarter prompt detection so agents know when the terminal needs input, support for both hidden background terminals and the active foreground terminal, and a new focus terminal option that lets users seamlessly take over from the agent for sensitive commands. Demonstrated with PowerShell scripts and npm init, agents can now detect multi-step prompts, collect user responses via chat, and automatically relay them back to the terminal — or hand off control to the user with a single click.

VS Code Terminal Agent Tools