Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is Microsoft's cross-platform source code editor. It is free and built on the MIT-licensed Code - OSS project. In the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey it was the most-used development environment, with about 76 percent of respondents using it. Its AI layer is now built in. GitHub Copilot ships with the editor, so a separate Copilot Chat extension is no longer needed from version 1.116. It offers inline suggestions, inline chat, a Chat view where agents edit files and run terminal commands and tests, and an Agents window for coordinating tasks across projects. Besides Copilot, it can run Claude and Codex agent harnesses. You can also bring your own API key or use a supported local model, and connect external tools through Model Context Protocol servers. Customization options include project instructions, prompt files, skills, custom agents and hooks. On pricing, the editor costs nothing. AI usage comes from a GitHub Copilot plan: signing in without a plan enrolls you in Copilot Free, which gives a monthly allowance of inline suggestions and AI credits. Model usage draws on AI credits, and paid Copilot tiers sold by GitHub raise those limits. Organizations can use enterprise AI policies on managed devices to restrict which agents, models and tools developers can use. The editor suits individual developers and companies that already work on GitHub. Its main limitation is that output quality and cost depend on Copilot billing and model choice. Testers also report that agents miss dependencies in large repositories and run commands in the local terminal. Several newer agent features, such as the companion app and parallel worktree sessions, launched first in the Insiders preview build.