Visual Studio's May 2026 update introduces several AI-assisted development features. The new Plan agent lets developers collaborate with Copilot to draft implementation plans as markdown files before touching any code. A new skills panel centralizes management of Agent Skills. A context window usage indicator shows how much of Copilot's context limit has been consumed. A multi-file summary diff view lets developers review all Copilot-generated changes in one place with accept/undo controls at file and chunk levels. Commit message custom instructions have been moved to the repository-level Copilot instructions file. Additionally, MSVC Build Tools v14.51 ships with C++23 conformance improvements, consteval and coroutine fixes, ARM SVE support, Intel APX preview, and new standard library containers including flat_map and flat_set.
Table of contents
Plan before you build with the Plan agent Copy linkView and manage Agent Skills Copy linkManage context window usage Copy linkMulti-file summary diff for Copilot changes Copy linkMulti-file summary diff Copy linkCommit message instructions moved Copy linkMSVC Build Tools v14.51 Copy link15.3K Impressions1 Comment