Visual Studio Code Now Lets You Use AI Agents Without GitHub

Visual Studio Code 1.133 is now available, and Microsoft is making its AI agent features easier to access without a GitHub account.

Last week, Microsoft released Visual Studio Code 1.132, and the company has now followed it with Visual Studio Code 1.133 under its new weekly release schedule.

The update focuses heavily on AI development, including signed-out access to the Agents window, easier model switching, improved chat navigation, and automatic browser refresh.

Agents window no longer requires GitHub sign-in

Developers can now enable the experimental chat.agentHost.allowSignedOutWhenUsable setting to open the Agents window without signing in to GitHub.

Instead of requiring GitHub authentication for the entire Agents experience, VS Code can associate authentication with individual agents or model providers.

For now, signed-out users are limited to Claude. Microsoft plans to add support for Copilot using developers’ own model keys and Codex in future releases.

VS Code can switch AI providers during a session

Visual Studio Code 1.133 also lets developers switch between Anthropic and GitHub Copilot models between turns without restarting or reconfiguring the agent host.

The model picker now shows models from both providers. Anthropic models listed under Other Models use Anthropic billing, while Copilot models use the developer’s existing Copilot subscription.

Microsoft recently introduced MAI-Code-1.1-Flash, although the new coding model is not currently available through GitHub Copilot.

Sticky scroll makes long AI chats easier to follow

VS Code now supports sticky scroll for prompts in lengthy AI conversations.

When developers scroll through a conversation, the relevant prompt stays pinned at the top of the chat. Previous and next controls also make it easier to jump between prompts and their associated responses.

Integrated browser can refresh HTML automatically

Microsoft has also improved the integrated browser.

Visual Studio Code can now automatically refresh HTML files when they change on disk, reducing the need to reload pages manually while testing web projects.

The release follows several other developer-focused Microsoft updates, including .NET 11 Preview 7, which introduces major SDK and toolchain changes ahead of the release candidate stage.