Visual Studio Code 1.136 introduces agent merges for pull requests

Microsoft has released Visual Studio Code 1.136, an update to the popular programming editor that previews an Agent Merge feature and introduces two experimental features for agentic coding. VS Code 1.136 was released September 2 and can be downloaded from code.visualstudio.com. Agent Merge, a preview feature, helps take a pull request across the finish line, Microsoft said. Agent Merge asks an agent to address review feedback, fix failed checks and merge conflicts, and rerun workflows until the pull request is ready to merge. To use Agent Merge, turn on the setting chat.agentMerge.enabled. Then you can enable Agent Merge for a session by running “Enable Agent Merge for Active Session” from the Agents window or selecting the “Agent Merge” button in the title bar. VS Code 1.136 also introduces multi-root workspaces, an experimental feature that allows developers to work with GitHub Copilot and Claude agents across multiple project folders in the editor window chat view. Agent hooks remain scoped to a single workspace folder, Microsoft said. If hooks are detected in multiple folders, VS Code prompts the user to select the primary folder from which to load them. Another experimental feature in VS Code 1.136 is chat backgrounds in the Agents window. This allows users to personalize the Agents window with a theme-aware pattern of built-in VS Code icons or an image of their own. Also new for chat are enterprise controls for dictation data. The new controls allow administrators to manage the dictation model and language-model transcript cleanup through enterprise policies. Microsoft said it was possible to require on-device transcription and disable language-model cleanup, so dictation remains available while preventing dictation data from being sent to cloud transcription or a Copilot model.