GitHub Copilot in VS Code, August 2026 Releases: Side-by-Side Agent Chats and Portable Plugins

What shipped

GitHub published the August 2026 Copilot changelog covering VS Code v1.132 through v1.135, a month of updates to agent sessions, chat, the integrated browser, and dictation.

What changed

Agent organizing gets real: chats can sit side-by-side in horizontal or vertical groups, /btw opens a side conversation that shares the primary chat's context and prompt cache, and a prompt timeline lets you jump between prompts and their file changes. Portable agent plugins install customizations across VS Code and other Agent Plugins 1.0 clients, and the Sessions list can resume Copilot or Claude sessions started in other apps. The Agent Host connects multiple windows to one session, with an experimental /rubber-duck command for a second opinion from a complementary model. Chat adds full transcript text search (case matching, whole words, regex), sticky scroll that pins the current prompt, token usage per model on hover, and an experimental hybrid Markdown diff editor. The integrated browser now annotates multiple HTML elements in one pass and auto-reloads local files on change. Dictation gains multi-language support and shell-aware cleanup for terminal commands.

Why a builder cares

Side-by-side chats and portable plugins turn Copilot into a multi-agent setup that survives editor restarts. If your team builds agent workflows, the cross-app session resume and prompt-cache-sharing /btw are the two features worth testing first.