KEMBAR78
Enable `runSubagent` tool for spawning isolated agent loops by default · Issue #270841 · microsoft/vscode · GitHub
Skip to content

Enable runSubagent tool for spawning isolated agent loops by default #270841

@digitarald

Description

@digitarald

Follow-up from talking with @roblourens.

  • Enable by default
  • Rename execute_prompt to an agent-focused name runSubagent.
  • 💪 System instructions to use the tool for running read-only research tasks
  • 💪 Ability to set an agent id (nee chatmode) for the given prompt (requires that the orchestrating agent knows

Why: The main benefit spawning isolated agent loops is that they can conduct extensive research in their own context window and return a concise summary to the main agent, preserving valuable space in the main conversation's context before it needs to summarize. The main use cases are exploration tasks, research, and independent work that can be clearly scoped.

Why not task tool, like Claude Code or Cline? VS Code already has several task primitives that this would clash with.

cc @aeschli

Metadata

Metadata

Labels

Type

No type

Projects

No projects

Milestone

Relationships

None yet

Development

No branches or pull requests

Issue actions