VsAgentic
An agentic AI coding assistant for Visual Studio 2026 — chat with Claude to explore, understand, and modify your codebase using integrated tools for file search, code navigation, and inline editing.
⭐ If VsAgentic saves you time, please consider giving it a star — it helps others discover the extension and motivates continued development!
✨ Features
🤖 Powered by Anthropic Claude
VsAgentic connects directly to the Anthropic API and uses the latest Claude models (Haiku, Sonnet, Opus) to understand your questions and act on your codebase — not just answer them.
Claude doesn't just suggest code — it uses tools to do the work for you:
| Tool |
Description |
bash |
Execute Git Bash commands — run builds, git operations, scripts, package installs |
grop |
Find files by glob pattern (e.g. **/*.cs, src/**/*.json) |
greb |
Search file contents with regex — like grep with file filtering and context lines |
read |
Read file contents with line numbers, with offset/limit for large files |
edit |
Perform exact string replacements in files — surgical, reviewable edits |
write |
Create new files or overwrite existing ones |
web_fetch |
Fetch a web page and return its content as clean Markdown (HTML converted via ReverseMarkdown) |
agent |
Spawn a sub-agent (Haiku) to handle a focused sub-task in parallel |
🧠 Smart Model Routing
VsAgentic automatically selects the right Claude model for each message:
| Mode |
Behaviour |
| Auto (default) |
Classifies task complexity and picks the best model automatically |
| Simple |
Always uses Claude Haiku — fastest, great for quick lookups |
| Moderate |
Always uses Claude Sonnet — balanced speed and reasoning |
| Complex |
Always uses Claude Opus — maximum reasoning for hard problems |
💬 Persistent Chat Sessions
- Sessions are saved per-workspace under
%AppData%\VsAgentic\workspaces\
- Conversation history and messages are fully restored when you reopen VS
- Auto-generated session titles based on your first message
- Manage sessions from the VsAgentic Sessions panel (open, rename, delete)
🖼️ Rich Markdown Rendering
Responses are rendered with full Markdown support — syntax-highlighted code blocks, tables, lists, and inline formatting — via an embedded WebView2 control.
🪟 Multi-Window Support
- Open multiple chat sessions simultaneously as floating or docked tool windows
- Each session maintains its own independent conversation history and AI context
🔁 Built-in Resilience
Automatic retry with exponential back-off on Anthropic API rate limits (429) and transient errors (502, 503, 504, 529).
📋 Requirements
- Visual Studio 2026 version 17.14 or later (Community, Professional, or Enterprise)
- Windows x64 (amd64)
- Git for Windows — required for the
bash tool (expects C:\Program Files\Git\bin\bash.exe)
- An Anthropic API key — get one at console.anthropic.com
🚀 Installation
Option 1 — Visual Studio Marketplace (recommended)
- Visit the VsAgentic page on the Visual Studio Marketplace
- Click Install and follow the prompts
- Or, open Visual Studio 2026, go to Extensions → Manage Extensions, search for VsAgentic, click Download and restart Visual Studio
Option 2 — Manual VSIX install
- Download the latest
.vsix file from the Releases page
- Double-click the
.vsix file to launch the VSIX Installer
- Follow the prompts and restart Visual Studio
⚙️ Setup
1. Set your Anthropic API Key
VsAgentic reads your API key from the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable.
Option A — System environment variable (recommended, persists across reboots):
# Run in an elevated PowerShell prompt
[System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("ANTHROPIC_API_KEY", "sk-ant-...", "Machine")
Then restart Visual Studio to pick up the new variable.
Option B — User environment variable:
- Open Start → Search → "Edit environment variables for your account"
- Click New under "User variables"
- Set Variable name:
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY and Variable value: sk-ant-...
- Click OK and restart Visual Studio
2. Open VsAgentic
Go to View → Other Windows → VsAgentic to open a new chat session.
A VsAgentic Sessions panel will also appear (docked next to Solution Explorer by default) where you can manage all your conversations.
🎮 Usage
- Open a solution — VsAgentic automatically scopes all file operations to your solution's root directory.
- Type a message in the chat input and press Enter or click Send.
- Watch Claude work — tool calls are shown inline as expandable steps so you can follow every action.
- Switch model modes — use the model selector in the chat toolbar to change routing behaviour mid-conversation.
Example prompts
Explain how the authentication flow works in this codebase.
Find all places where we catch exceptions without logging them.
Refactor the UserService to use dependency injection instead of static methods.
Add XML documentation comments to all public methods in IOrderRepository.cs
Run the unit tests and fix any failures you find.
🗂️ Project Structure
VsAgentic.sln
├── VsAgentic.VSExtension/ # VSIX entry point — commands, tool windows, package bootstrap
├── VsAgentic.UI/ # Shared WPF controls, ViewModels, Markdown renderer (WebView2)
├── VsAgentic.Services/ # Core AI logic — tools, chat service, model router, session store
├── VsAgentic.Desktop/ # Standalone WPF desktop app (for development & testing)
└── VsAgentic.Console/ # Console host (for development & testing)
🔒 Privacy & Security
- Your code is sent to the Anthropic API to fulfill requests. Review Anthropic's privacy policy before use on sensitive or proprietary codebases.
- Your API key is stored only as an environment variable — it is never written to disk by the extension.
- Session history (messages) is stored locally in
%AppData%\VsAgentic\ and never leaves your machine.
🐛 Known Limitations
- Requires Git for Windows to be installed at the default path for the
bash tool to function.
- Currently supports Visual Studio 2026 (17.14+) only — VS Code and Rider are not yet supported.
- The extension targets x64 Windows only.
💬 Feedback & Support
Your feedback makes VsAgentic better! Here's how to get involved:
- 🐛 Found a bug? Open an issue
- 💡 Have a feature idea? Start a discussion
- ⭐ Enjoying the extension? A star on GitHub goes a long way — thank you!
- 🗳️ Marketplace review — Leaving a review on the Visual Studio Marketplace helps other developers discover VsAgentic.
📄 License
This project is licensed under the MIT License.
Built with ❤️ for Visual Studio developers | Powered by Anthropic Claude
