Giving Copilot Agent in Visual Studio a try

After using the GitHub Copilot Agent mode for some time in VS Code, I finally found some time to give it a try in Visual Studio. Agent mode got introduced as part of the 17.14 release so if you are still using an older Visual Studio version, please update first.

Remark: Other interesting AI features in the same release are Next Edit Suggestions and AI comment generation.

Let’s dive in!

Open Visual Studio and go to the GitHub Copilot Chat window:

Click on the dropdown icon next to Ask and choose Agent:

Remark: Notice that the Edits feature has disappeared. So you only have Ask or Agent. I don’t know if the feature is still there, but at least I couldn’t find it…

Now we can ask the agent to perform specific tasks or let it figure out a solution based on a PRD (Product Requirement Document) or similar you’ve provided. So far so good.
The not-so-secret superpower of agents is that they are not limited to your IDE but can interact with the outside world. Out-of-the-box, you get access to MCP tools that can interact with GitHub:

Of course you are not limited to GitHub only and we can add other tools as well. Therefore create a .mcp.json file in your solution folder.

Notice the . in .mcp.json. This is not a typo!
The mcp configuration can be stored in multiple places. Some of these locations require .mcp.json while others require mcp.json. Don't ask me why!