What are Visual Studio custom Copilot agents?

Repo-based AI specialists defined in .agent.md files — they know your code, standards, tools without repeated prompts.

How do I create custom Copilot agents in Visual Studio?

Add .agent.md to .github/agents/ with instructions, tools, MCP. They auto-appear in the picker. Grab examples from awesome-copilot.

Does Visual Studio custom Copilot work with VS Code?

Partial sync via GitHub, but full power's VS-only for now — agents need IDE workspace depth.

🛠️ Developer Tools

Visual Studio's Custom Copilot Agents: The IDE Finally Gets Personal

What if your AI coding assistant actually knew your team's rules without constant hand-holding? Visual Studio's new custom Copilot agents promise that — but who's really winning here?

theAIcatchup Apr 08, 2026 4 min read

Visual Studio editor with custom Copilot agent picker and PerfTips during debugging

⚡ Key Takeaways

Custom agents adapt Copilot to your exact codebase and standards via simple markdown files. 𝕏
Live profiling integrates AI optimizations directly into debugging for instant perf fixes. 𝕏
This positions Visual Studio as enterprise AI IDE leader, potentially dominating like .NET did in 2002. 𝕏

Published by

theAIcatchup

Community-driven. Code-first.

#Copilot Agents #Custom AI Agents #GitHub Copilot #IDE Updates #Live Profiling #Visual Studio #dev-tools

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Originally reported by Dev.to

⚡ Key Takeaways

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