Quick prompts are great for small fixes, but they fall short on big projects. You end up rewriting instructions, tweaking them constantly, and hoping the model stays on track. It gives Copilot a visible, structured path to follow, one that updates as it works and keeps you in control at every step.
In Agent Mode, Copilot can now create plans that research your codebase, break down big tasks, and run them step by step while iterating along the way. The result is a more predictable and transparent workflow that helps you understand exactly what it’s doing.
How It Works
Planning uses transparent tool calls to manage complex tasks in a structured way.
When you ask Copilot to handle a multi-step task, it automatically determines whether to respond directly or switch into built in planning. Simple prompts get quick answers, while multi-step ones trigger a coordinated plan. When invoked, Planning creates a markdown file that defines the task, research steps, and progress updates as each execution begins. As Copilot works, it revises and refines the plan — adapting to new context or results.
A few details to keep in mind:
- The plan is written to a temporary file (
%TEMP%\VisualStudio\copilot-vs\). To reuse it across threads, add it to your repo. If you want longer-term storage options, upvote this request. - If you edit the plan while a response is running, changes may not take effect immediately. Stop the response, update the file or prompt, and restart it. We’re exploring ways to make mid-response edits smoother. Upvote this idea -> if you’d like to see it sooner.
- Progress is tracked directly in the plan file, so you can always see what’s completed and what’s next.
How Planning Impacts Response Quality
Planning makes Copilot more predictable and consistent by giving it a structured way to reason about your project. It builds on techniques from hierarchical and closed-loop planning research – enabling Copilot to plan at a high level, execute step-by-step, and adjust dynamically as it learns more about your codebase and issues encountered during implementation.
In our latest SWE-bench runs, both GPT-5 and Claude Sonnet 4 performed better with planning, around 15% higher success and 20% more tasks resolved and we’re continuing to test additional models to confirm the trend.
These early results show measurable gains in reliability and task completion, especially for larger, multi-step problems.
What’s Next
We’re actively collecting feedback as we evolve Copilot’s planning system to better fit your workflow. This marks the foundation of planning-driven development in Visual Studio. Upcoming improvements will focus on smarter caching, refined reasoning, and deeper project context. It’s an early milestone – but one we believe will make Copilot a more predictable and transparent collaborator. Share your feedback here: Planning/To dos in Copilot Chat.
I'm not really sure how the planning works but trying it out in VS2022 seems to have made things worse. I tried something like 'Plan xyz'. It generated a markdown file with a progress bar and some steps that seemed correct. I told it to proceed and it started running tasks but the markdown never changed, progress indicator didn't move and the tasklist didn't update. Not even sure how to get back to this markdown if I were to close it.
Additionally, I've been playing around with modernization agent in VS 2026. Since it is also supported in VS 2022 along...
This is super helpful. thank you for taking the time to write this all out. I’ve already shared your notes with the engineering team so we can investigate, but to help us debug and get to the bottom of it, would you be able to file a bug and include your logs from when this happened? That’ll help us reproduce the behavior and work toward a fix much faster.
Really appreciate you trying this across both VS 2022 and VS 2026 — that comparison is incredibly valuable for us to narrow down where things are breaking.
File bugs here: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/VisualStudio
I’ve found it sometimes creates Markdown files in the root folder of the solution but they don’t show up in Solution Explorer. You have to open the folder on the disk to see them. (it will try to commit them to git though!)
I’m surprised this actually improved the LLM perf. In larger tasks, I find the LLMs just get caught in doom loops rather than actually losing track of what they’re supposed to be doing (eg, they try something, it fails, they keep trying and it keeps failing- usually making the code worse and worse)
Under the hood, we actually maintain an LLM-readable version of the plan – a JSON file that tracks progress and logs when something goes wrong. If the model tries a particular approach and it fails, that information is fed back into the plan.
This gives the model more structure and context about what’s already been attempted, so it doesn’t keep retrying the same failing path. In our testing, that feedback loop has reducing loops and made task execution more stable and consistent overall.
I’d like to see the Copilot improvements made available to all VS versions of 2022 and 2026 Insiders. It’s rare for an improvement to be only for the previous version and not the new one. Both teams should be in sync.
We are shipping a release of insiders today, so keep an eye out for an update
I would like to use this option in VS 2026 Insiders as well. Any information when this option will be available?
We are shipping a release of insiders today, so keep an eye out for an update
I can't find it in either VS2022 or VS2026 options.
This option path doesn't exist: Tools > Options > Copilot > Enable Planning
I assume this? Tools > Options > GitHub > Copilot -- but it's not there either.
I'd like to test it. I managed to get dotnet installed into Claude Code for Web and it has excellent planning support right now, but it can only check it compiles, it can't run the app.
Bugs I'd love to see fixed:
- Allow Agent to run on two different solutions in two different copies of Visual Studio at the same time
...
No worries. QQ What is preventing an agent from running on two different instances of Visual Studio for you?
Hey Qing, what version of 2022 are you on? We just released a new version yesterday which has this feature
Rhea, totally my fault. I was sure I updated VS2022 last night, but I guess not. Updated now, option there and enabled. Is it coming to Insiders? I’m moving all my desktop app dev over from 2022 to 2026 and web dev to VSCode.