Image: Microsoft / code.visualstudio.com VS Code 1.137 Adds Voice Mode, Agent Automations, and a New Open Agent Protocol
The September 9 release lets you talk to agents while they code, schedule recurring tasks, and introduces an open spec that decouples agent sessions from the editor entirely.
Visual Studio Code 1.137 landed on September 9, 2026. This is a release about agents getting more persistent, more automated, and more accessible — including, for the first time, voice-controlled.
Agent Automations
The headline feature is Automations, currently in preview. You can now schedule recurring agent tasks to run hourly, daily, weekly, or on demand.
Microsoft ships templates for the obvious use cases: catching up on recent changes, triaging issues, and finding bugs. But you can define your own prompt and schedule too. The idea is that the agent keeps running in the background even when you’re not at the keyboard — checking the codebase, flagging regressions, whatever you set it up to do.
This is an extension of the direction VS Code has been moving since 1.136’s Agent Merge feature, which let agents address review comments and merge PRs on their own. Automations take that a step further: the agent works on a timer, not just when you invoke it.
Voice Mode
Voice Mode is experimental and opt-in. When enabled, you can speak to an agent and interrupt or redirect it mid-task. If the agent goes down a wrong path, you say so, and it adjusts.
Configuration is accessible via right-clicking the Voice Mode button in the Agents window, or through the Command Palette. You can select your microphone from that menu.
This has obvious accessibility implications, but it’s also just practical for situations where typing is inconvenient. Whether it becomes a mainstream workflow depends a lot on how accurate the transcription turns out to be in practice.
Agent Host Protocol
The more architecturally interesting change is the Agent Host architecture and the open Agent Host Protocol (AHP). The spec was introduced in 1.136 but is formalized in 1.137.
The core idea: agent sessions are now decoupled from the VS Code extension host. That means a session can survive closing a folder. It can run as a standalone process on a remote machine and expose AHP over WebSocket, letting you connect from VS Code via SSH or a dev tunnel.
The protocol is open, which matters. Third-party tools can implement it, letting agents run outside of VS Code’s own extension model. It’s early, but this is the kind of architectural foundation that other things get built on.
Persistent Quick Chats
Quick chats — the lightweight chat panel you can open without spinning up a full agent session — can now be attached to a workspace and persist across sessions. Prior conversation history carries over, so you don’t lose context when you close and reopen VS Code.
GitHub Issues and PRs in the Agents Window
You can now review GitHub issue and pull request details directly in the Agents window without having to open the repository. The agent can work with that context directly, which cuts down on the context-gathering overhead at the start of a task.
One More Thing: VS Code Pet
There is also VS Code Pet, still experimental, which is an interactive companion that “reacts as you work with agents.” Microsoft is running a community contest to name it through September 17. Whether this ships as a real feature or stays a curiosity is an open question, but it’s an odd and charming addition to a release otherwise focused on practical workflow changes.
The full release notes are on the VS Code website.