Visual Studio Code v1.123 Changelog

This update is all about supercharging the AI helpers (often called "agents") inside VS Code. It is perfect for student developers or anyone working on big projects, because it lets the AI understand much larger chunks of code at once and helps you keep track of your work across multiple computers.

What's new

• Massive AI memory (1M context window): AI models like Claude and GPT can now "remember" up to 1 million tokens (which is roughly 750,000 words) at the same time. This means you can ask the AI questions about huge, complex codebases without it forgetting what you are talking about. Just keep in mind that using this much memory might burn through your AI credits faster.
• Synced chat history: Your AI chat conversations now automatically sync to your GitHub account. If you start a project on a school computer and finish it at home, your chat history follows you. It remembers the files you worked on, your code branches, and any links you shared.
• Searchable history (Chronicle): Because your chats are synced, you can now type /chronicle in the chat box to search your past work. You can ask it questions in plain English about what you did before, generate a summary of your work for a group standup meeting, or search for old topics and files.
• Side-by-side AI agents: There is a new "Agents window" that lets you open multiple AI chat sessions right next to each other. This is great if you want to compare two different AI solutions side-by-side. You can even "pin" a chat so it doesn't get replaced when you click on a different one.
• Deep research agent: If you need to understand a complicated topic, you can type /research followed by your question. Instead of just changing your code, this AI acts like a researcher. It reads your code, checks GitHub, and searches the web to write a detailed, well-cited report in Markdown format. It takes longer to run, but it goes really deep.
• Better browser bookmarks: The web browser built into VS Code now has a star icon in the address bar. You can favorite useful pages and easily switch between them or your open tabs.
• New screenshot tools: When you are looking at a website inside VS Code, you can now take a screenshot of just a specific area, or even the entire long webpage (not just the part visible on your screen). You can send these screenshots straight to your AI to help it understand visual bugs or layout issues.
• Custom logins for AI tools (MCP OAuth): Some AI helper tools (called MCP servers) require a special login. You can now add a specific client ID directly into your settings file so these tools can log in securely.

Improvements

• Smarter sandbox networking: Sometimes AI agents run terminal commands that need internet access (like git fetch to download new code). Previously, the "sandbox" (a safe zone that stops AI from messing with your files) would block this. Now, if a command needs internet, VS Code will safely retry it with network access turned on, while still keeping your files protected.

Fixes

• The release notes mention that small updates (1.123.1 and 1.123.2) were pushed out to fix security issues and other general problems shortly after the main launch.

Breaking changes

No breaking changes in this release.