Agent Team Planner

Agent Team Planner coordinates dependency-aware Copilot workers in Visual Studio Code. It is an experimental tool: review plans, changes, and commands before relying on their results.

Setup

1. Install the extension from Visual Studio Marketplace.
2. Open a trusted folder in VS Code and sign in to GitHub Copilot.
3. Open Agent Teams: Getting Started for a three-step introduction and a read-only example. The example button copies to your clipboard and opens chat; paste and send it yourself in Copilot Agent mode.
4. Follow progress in Explorer > Agent Teams or Agent Teams: Open Activity Panel.

On hosts supporting extension-contributed Skills, the bundled agent-team skill can be discovered when your request calls for team coordination. Use /agent-team to invoke it explicitly when available. Discovery depends on your VS Code/Copilot version, enabled customizations and tools; it is not guaranteed for every request. VS Code 1.105 does not provide this skill contribution: use #planAgentTeam to draft a plan, or #runAgentTeam for a fully specified authorized task list.

The extension does not install instruction files into your project or user profile, change approval settings, or start work merely because it was installed. Open Agent Teams: Open Troubleshooting for model access, approval, failed tasks, recovery and feedback guidance. A normal first run is: describe a goal, review and approve the draft, then inspect task results and verification evidence.

Features

• Runs bounded parallel workers with task dependencies and declared writable resources.
• Persists task state, bounded history, messages, checkpoints, and results in VS Code workspace storage.
• Supports status, cancellation, retry, resume, report export, and confirmed history deletion.
• Offers optional worktree isolation, model routing, plan approval, and continuous-iteration automation.

Controls

Use the Activity Panel or Command Palette to inspect teams, stop work, retry or resume tasks, export reports, and delete completed history. Agent Teams: Stop All Automation (Emergency) pauses running teams and optional automation; Resume Automation reverses that pause. Automation is opt-in and external delivery remains manual.

The graph's Simplify checkbox is enabled by default and remembers your choice in the panel. It hides only transitively implied links: when A leads to B and B leads to C, the extra A-to-C link is hidden. The hidden-link count is shown beside the checkbox. Clear it for the complete dependency graph. Task execution, handoffs and original dependencies are unchanged; Task Details > Execution retains the full dependency list. This does not merge tasks or change an approved plan.

Worktree Isolation

Plan review shows whether modification tasks will use the shared workspace or isolated Git worktrees. Isolation is off by default. Use Worktree settings to choose the User or Workspace setting explicitly; this shortcut does not change settings or approve a plan. Workspace settings can make a tracked settings file dirty. Agent approval of modify tasks still requires a clean Git workspace.

With isolation enabled, each modify task gets its worktree only when it starts after approval and its dependencies. Drafts and read-only tasks do not create worktrees. Changing the setting does not move already-running tasks. Local feedback includes the current setting and recorded worktree status, but not worktree paths or branch names.

Model Selection

Set copilotAgentTeams.defaultModel to a Copilot model family or id and copilotAgentTeams.fallbackModels to an ordered list of backup models. These settings apply to workers, Planner, conversation compaction and real-profile smoke. They do not follow the model selected in the Copilot Chat dropdown.

Explicit modelRouting profile/role rules take priority. A nonempty defaultModel replaces the * route; unavailable routes then try the configured backups followed by the built-in automatic fallback. Empty new settings retain existing routing defaults. Planner and compaction use role:planner; smoke uses role:smoke. Existing reviewer/architect routes can therefore override your new default until you change those role settings.

Backup choices are explicit and may select high-cost models; cost exclusions apply only to implicit fallback. This is selection-time fallback, not provider failover: transient request errors retry the same model. An authorization that explicitly pins a task model still fails closed if that model cannot be resolved. New Continuous Planner dispatches resolve and persist exact catalog model IDs before execution. Retry and reload preserve these bindings even when routing settings change. A missing pinned ID stops that task instead of choosing another model; create a new Planner decision to select a different model. Historical policies and ordinary unpinned teams retain their existing routing behavior.

Team status includes the five latest captain-directed messages, including ones already marked read. Repeated verification failures are bounded: three failed required gates with the same command, working directory and Git content in one attempt stop the worker and notify the captain. Changed content, success, timeouts, cancellation or unavailable fingerprints reset that count. No success is cached and no gate is skipped. Review the error and ownership before retrying; reloading also resets this attempt-local guard.

Iteration Resource Review

For a Continuous Iteration mission, the agent can set planResources: true on agent_teams_iteration_create and supply up to 20 inspected workspace-relative candidate file paths in resources (or use configured iteration resources). The planner selects a smaller writable set; it cannot invent or expand paths. This step proposes ownership only and does not run workers or commands.

Use Agent Teams: Review Iteration Resources to inspect the goal and exact proposed files, then approve and start or reject. Closing the dialog does nothing. Approval still requires a trusted Git workspace, clean working tree, enabled worktree isolation and unpaused automation. New file candidates need an existing parent directory; directory prefixes and Git metadata are not accepted in this proposal flow. Paths are checked again before dispatch.

Approved ownership is persisted for the whole mission and reused after reload. To change scope, stop the mission and propose again. Failed or interrupted planning never dispatches work; inspect status and stop it before retrying. The existing explicitly scoped create flow remains available when planResources is omitted. Neither path uses a built-in broad resource fallback.

Limits

AI output can be incomplete or wrong. Workers consume Copilot model quotas and may also be subject to tool, provider, and concurrency limits. They can receive repository content, completed dependency output, selected skills, direct messages, and other context supplied by enabled tools. Available host tools may access local files or remote services and can have side effects; declared resources improve coordination but are not a security sandbox.

Local history is bounded and may be compacted. Deleting a team removes the extension's selected local record after confirmation, but cannot recall content already sent to model providers, remote tools, logs, exports, backups, or source-control history. Remote-host retention and deletion are governed by those services. Do not provide secrets or sensitive personal data.

Privacy

The extension uses the VS Code Language Model API and enabled tools to perform requested work. Relevant prompts and context can leave the local machine for Copilot or remote tool hosts. Inspect tool permissions, workspace trust, automation settings, and proposed commands before use. The extension does not provide complete data-loss prevention.

Workspace history and recovery checkpoints are stored through VS Code's extension storage; in remote workspaces this can be on the remote extension host. Logs, exports, Git artifacts and VS Code backups are separate records. There is no fixed automatic deletion period promised here, and deleting a team does not erase those other copies or provider-held data.

The Feedback action opens an unsaved local JSON draft and does not upload it or invoke an AI. Descriptions are optional; bounded diagnostics are included automatically. Review before saving or sharing: redaction is best effort, and VS Code may retain unsaved content in backups. Provider and tool data-handling policies apply separately; this extension does not promise provider training exclusions or a data-residency region.

Existing Local Builds

This extension's identity is TrWei.agent-team-planner. An older local build named local.copilot-agent-teams is a different extension, not an automatic upgrade source. Its history is not automatically migrated. Test in a separate profile/workspace, preserve the old installation and history, and do not enable both identities in the same profile because their command/tool identifiers overlap.

Review inherited copilotAgentTeams settings before opening a real repository. For an initially paused environment, set copilotAgentTeams.automationPaused to true. Continuous Planner auto-dispatch and continuous-iteration auto-advance are opt-in; configured automation and recovery can continue work after the initiating chat turn. Retained checkpoints, exports and rollback copies are not proof of a supported import/migration workflow.

Support

For non-sensitive bug reports and questions, use the extension's Q & A page on Visual Studio Marketplace. Include the extension version, VS Code version, and a redacted description. Do not post credentials, proprietary source, personal data, or other sensitive content.