---
title: "Visual Studio July Update — Meet the New Agent, Powered by the GitHub Copilot SDK"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/visual-studio-july-update-meet-the-new-agent-powered-by-the-github-copilot-sdk-owf8vxnqo
source_url: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-july-update-meet-the-new-agent-powered-by-copilot-sdk
type: article
source: "Visual Studio Blog"
published: 2026-07-28T16:02:45.969Z
updated: 2026-07-30T15:28:00.540Z
tags: ["github", ".net", "c++", "visual-studio", "ai-assisted-development"]
reading_time: 5
upvotes: 8
comments: 0
language: en
---

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> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt
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# Visual Studio July Update — Meet the New Agent, Powered by the GitHub Copilot SDK

**[Visual Studio Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/vs)** · 5 min read · 8 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Visual Studio's July 2026 update introduces a new Agent (Preview) in Copilot Chat, built on the GitHub Copilot SDK for a more consistent experience across Copilot surfaces including CLI, VS Code, and Visual Studio. Built-in .NET and Azure skills authored by Microsoft teams are now available in the tool picker. Organization owners can set custom instructions that apply automatically across all team members. Branches can now be attached as context in Copilot Chat. C++ builds gain opt-in auto-discovery of pinned MSVC toolset versions across multiple Visual Studio installations via the EnableVCToolsVersionDiscovery property.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-july-update-meet-the-new-agent-powered-by-copilot-sdk>

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- [GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio — April update](https://daily.dev/posts/github-copilot-in-visual-studio-april-update-smq2h4vdp) · GitHub Changelog · 33 upvotes · 2 comments

---

Tags: [#github](https://daily.dev/tags/github), [#.net](https://daily.dev/tags/.net), [#c++](https://daily.dev/tags/c++), [#visual-studio](https://daily.dev/tags/visual-studio), [#ai-assisted-development](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-assisted-development)

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