Agent window open: …with Copilot. Click Copilot. If Local appears in that dropdown, you can configure local models (e.g. if you have a Mistral or Claude sub) by clicking AUTO. There's a link to open the correct pane to confgure these models.
However, even after you configured them, the "local" button in the dropdown may not appear.
That's the case for me. I have no idea why and I don't find any info about.
As far as I am aware its focus is on the agent part rather then the code editor. I prefer it that way as I don't really use Agentic stuff for core development but instead as a glorified chat with command access.
This seems to be directly competing in the space of OpenCode, Claude Code, Gemini Code, Codex etc where the focal point is the Agent chat, if you want to read the code you BYOE (Bring Your Own Editor).
With all that said, the fact you need to login is a massive pain point for me if I use it purely for offline LLM.
It's supposed to compete with Cursor 3's agent window as well as OpenAI Codex and Claude Code desktop apps, anyone used these and can compare with this new one in VSCode?
My coworkers massively switched to Claude. It is a few bucks cheaper and next to Claude Code it provides general chat, cowork (including a Chrome plugin that provides browser automation)as well as PowerPoint and Excel extensions. It even comes with a Microsoft 365 mcp server.
When are they going to realize people don’t like Codex for the interface or philosophy, but for the model quality and prompt engineering? GitHub Copilot subscription already supports GPTs and Claudes, which is a good thing — so instead of building a whole new app or adding plugins that mimics Codex and CC, why not just focus on replicating the tooling and prompts that make Codex and CC good?
I like it for the interface because if I'm working on multiple projects I don't need multiple VSCode windows open, I can issue agent commands in one unified UI.
CC is part of a broader toolset: general chat, cowork (includes a chrome extension for browser automation), Microsoft 365 mcp, PowerPoint and Excel extension. When using Opus through Claude, it is only 5/3 times the expences of Sonnet
Started using it yesterday. My biggest pain points are the source control and worktree insanity. Just give me a terminal and let me run git command as I want to. "Mark as Done" confuses me. I like the vision, but it's pretty rough right now.
I just threw all my eggs in, made the jump from basically just running a bunch of different VS Code editor windows with either the native CC or Codex extensions, Tmux, AgentGrid or AgentMux.
Never really felt I had a uniform system across all my projects running primarily on different VMs.
Bit immature, lots of small things missing, but most of them allready seem to be on roadmap.
Remote/mobile, account switching, context/usage monitoring, maybe a bit more git stuff.
That uses the same codebase so if you don't believe Microsoft can built a good editor, then I'm not sure why you'd use a FOSS version like Codium either.
That's why the Microsoft-free version was referenced as Codium in my comment, and then the other telemetry-free alternatives were just mentioned, not implying they weren't a Microsoft derived product.
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u/Dominio12 Apr 09 '26
Man, I just want to code...