What were the biggest technical shifts in Visual Studio and VS Code?
GitHub Copilot's agentic workflows have fundamentally shifted VS Code from local software to AI-backed service architecture
“the product is not just the client software that is installed and runs on your local machine, but it's actually hitting a service that supports the intelligence behind GitHub Copilot”
A Microsoft developer reflects on the two biggest architectural shifts in VS Code: the open-source extension ecosystem that set the template for all subsequent editors, and GitHub Copilot's introduction of AI-powered agentic workflows. The latter has transformed the product from a standalone local editor into a client-service system requiring significant backend infrastructure for model serving and capacity. While historically interesting, this is a retrospective take on already-known shifts rather than a new announcement.