Microsoft released Visual Studio Code 1.112 on March 18, 2026, continuing the editor's new weekly release cadence. The update's standout feature is a three-tier agent permission system for Copilot that gives developers control over how autonomously their AI coding agents operate.

Three Levels of Agent Autonomy

The new permission system gives developers granular control over agent behavior:

  • Default Permissions — tools require manual confirmation before running, the current behavior for most users
  • Bypass Approvals — auto-approves all tool calls and retries automatically on errors, removing interruption overhead
  • Autopilot — the most aggressive mode: auto-approves all tool calls, auto-responds to in-progress questions, and continues working until the task is fully complete without any human intervention

Autopilot mode is enabled via the chat.autopilot.enabled setting, and is turned on by default in the VS Code Insiders build.

Other Notable Changes

Integrated browser debugging brings end-to-end web app debugging directly inside VS Code for both Launch and Attach configurations, removing the need to switch between the editor and an external browser.

MCP server sandboxing lets users run local MCP servers in an isolated environment, limiting what they can access on the host machine — a practical security improvement as MCP tool ecosystems grow.

Agent image support allows Copilot to work with screenshots, diagrams, and binary files in agent conversations. Monorepo support lets teams share agent instructions and skills across all packages in a single repository.

The weekly release schedule, started with 1.111 the previous week, signals Microsoft's intent to ship developer-facing AI features faster than any other IDE on the market.