Visual Studio 2022 version 17.14 Release Notes

I regularly follow the Visual Studio Release Notes, and for me, Version 17.14 is an exciting release, I am not going to copypasta the release notes, but hopefully add some more meat on the bones to Microsoft's release notes here.

The last major release from the Visual Studio team was 17.13 released this year, on the 11th January 2025, you can read more about this release here. You can also read more about previous versions in the related articles section below.

Co-Pilot Agent Mode

The major feature in this major release is Agent Mode, this is a new feature in Git Copilot, that can run commands, provide MCP functions, and perform actions like edit and view files, it can also run builds.

Enable Agent mode in the chat pane

In my version of Visual Studio Enterprise, I had to enable the Agent Mode, you can do so in the settings below:

Once Agent Mode is enabled, you will see a drop down in the GitHub Copilot Chat, and it will look something like below:

When making changes, you know get this nifty "Apply" button that will apply to code to the file, rather than manually copy and pasting.

So for example, you can ask Copilot to "Build the solution" and in Ask mode it will provide the command which you can Apply:

or in Agent mode, it will ask to run the command for you:

You can then view what is happening in the GitHub Copilot Terminal.

Agent Mode Commands

A list of the new commands provided by Git Copilot, the run_command_in_terminal is definately the most powerful. In all honesty CoPilot has been able to read contextually for a while, and now being able to create the file for you is both impressive, and can be equally as dangerous.

Copilot Tool	Description
learn_search	Looks up documentation and code samples.
text_search	Searches the codebase for code snippets
get_file	Get the contents of a file
get_currentfile	Gets the currently active document
get_errors	Get compilation errors
find_files	Search for files in the workspace
get_files_in_project	Return the path of all files in the workspace
get_projects_in_solution	Return the relative file path of projects in the solution
run_build	Build the solution, and return if the build was successful or not.
edit_file	Edit code in a specific file
run_command_in_terminal	Run a command in powershell and output the result.

Conclusion

In summary, version 17.14 is probably playing catchup with Microsoft Visual Code, however Visual Studio was always aimed at more structured developers. I think that Visual Code is more for hobbyists and script kids. 17.14 agent mode is impressive, and although it is just providing commands to the Copilot Terminal, asking it to build and debug your solution is definately a useful tool, especially after asking it to work on code features.

Are you a video person? Watch the video below: