VS Code: AI Chat Gets Smarter with Claude Compatibility and Modal Improvements
A massive AI-focused update with 20 merged PRs enhancing VS Code's chat capabilities. Major highlights include Claude compatibility improvements, new slash commands for models and tools, and significant modal editor enhancements. The team also migrated several extensions from webpack to esbuild for better performance.
Duration: PT4M20S
Episode overview
This episode is a short developer briefing from VS Code.
It explains recent repository work in plain language.
- Show: VS Code
- Published: 2026-02-13T11:17:25Z
- Audio duration: PT4M20S
Transcript excerpt
This excerpt keeps the crawler page concise. Listen to the episode or use the RSS feed for the full update.
Hey there, fellow developers! Welcome back to another episode of the VS Code podcast. I'm your host, and wow, do we have an exciting episode today! February 13th brought us one of the most AI-focused updates we've seen in a while, with the team shipping some incredible improvements to VS Code's chat and AI…
Let's dive right into the biggest story of the day - the team has been working hard on making VS Code's AI features more compatible with Claude. Paul led the charge with a seemingly small but crucial change, renaming "user-invokable" to "user-invocable" across the entire codebase. Now, I know what you're thinking -…
Speaking of AI improvements, Rob added some fantastic new slash commands - `/models` and `/tools` - that'll make it so much easier to discover and work with AI capabilities right in your chat interface. No more hunting around menus or remembering obscure command names!
Don Jayamanne made background agents even more powerful by adding support for prompt file slash commands. This is huge for workflow automation - you can now use those custom prompts you've crafted directly with background agents. The testing around this was thorough too, with snapshot tests ensuring…
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Nearby episodes from VS Code
- Chat Goes Pro with Browser Console Integration
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- AI Chat Gets Smarter & Playwright Powers Up
- The Chat Intelligence Revolution - AI Gets Smarter with Slash Commands and Background Agents
- Chat Gets Claude Rules and Context Smarts
- Chat Intelligence Revolution
- Chat Gets Smart with Metered Networks and Confetti Celebrations