Dear Microsoft: Stop sticking your AI in my IDE

Microsoft is prioritizing AI and agent features in Visual Studio Code, with nearly every new feature in recent releases focused on AI, according to a developer complaint. The author argues that VS Code should instead focus on core editor improvements and extensibility, warning that not all users want an "agentic development environment" over an IDE.

Dear Microsoft, I don’t want to have a love-hate relationship with Visual Studio Code https://www.infoworld.com/article/2335960/what-is-visual-studio-code-microsofts-extensible-code-editor.html , but you’re making it really hard. Once upon a time, Visual Studio Code was just an editor. You configured it with add-ons to make it do whatever job you needed. And that was great I gravitated towards using VS Code for multiple jobs in various languages. I could set up a Python https://www.infoworld.com/article/2253770/what-is-python-powerful-intuitive-programming.html workflow with extensions to add database-wrangling functionality. I could put together an environment for digital book publishing. I could even set up a project for screenwriting Yes, I have a screenplay in progress. A man can dream. Now, it’s not like all this went away yesterday. I can still do all of the above. But literally every new feature in VS Code these days is all about agents, AI, and LLMs. It makes me wonder if there’s anyone left in the building who is working on the actual editor anymore. In the release notes for VS Code 1.127 https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1 127 , literally every single new feature save one https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1 127 integrated-browser was about agents and AI. Ditto the version before that https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1 126 . The version before that https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1 125 was a little better, but the trend has been clear for some time now: Visual Studio Code is fast becoming an agent front end first, and everything else is a distant second. One argument I’ve heard is that VS Code is now a mature project. Because there just isn’t much left to be done to improve the core, you have directed your attention towards other features that will attract new users. And because agent-and-AI mania is still burning through the enterprise and everyone’s budgets , agent-and-AI features are the order of the day. But do these features really need to be IDE-level features? Instead of drastically retooling VS Code to support agents, and making AI features native elements of the IDE, shouldn’t the real mission be to support VS Code’s native extensibility? After all, VS Code was built to be extended, and thousands of AI add-ons https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/search?target=VSCode&category=AI&sortBy=Installs — including GitHub Copilot https://www.infoworld.com/article/3609013/github-copilot-everything-you-need-to-know.html and dozens of your own extensions https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/search?term=microsoft&target=VSCode&category=AI&sortBy=Relevance — already take advantage of that. Is all this really about what AI features VS Code can support natively, or is it more about making VS Code a default first point of contact for agents and AI — specifically GitHub Copilot https://www.infoworld.com/article/3609013/github-copilot-everything-you-need-to-know.html ? Is this less about developer convenience, and more about guaranteeing — however obnoxiously — that agents and AI tools always have a central place in VS Code? Whatever the goal is, if you think every VS Code user wants an “ agentic development environment https://www.infoworld.com/article/4193975/the-ide-is-dead-long-live-the-ade.html ” instead of an IDE, I think you’re dead wrong. No doubt AI tools are here to stay. But I do think they will experience a reckoning. Frontier models that do everything and six more things on top of that are becoming of real use only to the big vendors who stick API tollbooths in front of them and construct wetland-devouring data centers the size of the Vegas strip to power them. The future looks more like smaller, locally-hosted models that handle highly specialized tasks and require far fewer resources to train, deploy, and serve. Even you seem to be moving in that direction, with the Aion on-device models https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2026/06/02/expanding-on-device-ai-in-microsoft-edge-new-models-and-apis-for-the-web/ . The deeper we go into that reckoning, the less it makes sense to have cart-before-the-horse arrangements like VS Code’s native AI features. How long before these features get hoisted back out of VS Code and moved to an add-on albeit one we get nagged to install every time we fire up our IDE ? Sooner rather than later, I’d bet. Still, until that fine day comes, I’m resigning myself to the idea that my current favorite editor will be stuffed with more and more AI features, whether or not they even make sense in my use case, for a long, wearying time to come. At least I can turn all that stuff off https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ can-i-disable-ai-functionality-in-vs-code . For now. As I was writing this in VS Code, no less , I got an update to VS Code 1.128. There’s one nice feature in there I could see myself using quite widely: the ability to register OS-level keyboard shortcuts https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1 128 os-level-keyboard-shortcuts . But the rest? All AI, all agents, all the time.