Visual Studio Code 1.131 Ships on MS Build 2026 Day With Built-In Dictation and Agent Polish
The new release pushes voice input and subagent observability into the editor, though some features still land behind experimental flags.
Visual Studio Code 1.131 is out now, arriving on the same day as Microsoft Build 2026. The release wraps built-in dictation, deeper subagent visibility in the Agent window, and a hybrid Markdown editor into the Stable channel. Python Environments also flips to default after its rollout finally hit 100 percent.
If you've been juggling multi-step agent tasks, you've probably noticed the old friction: opening a subagent's chat just to check what it's doing. VS Code 1.131 surfaces that context directly in the parent conversation. You'll see the model each subagent is using, how long it's been running, and the exact tool call it's executing. Click a running subagent, and it opens in a separate chat panel without losing your place in the main conversation.
It's a small UX tweak that treats subagents as actual participants rather than background workers. For workflows that delegate work across parallel contexts, it cuts out a lot of the guesswork. Microsoft has been framing the new Agent Host Protocol as the backbone for these multi-harness setups, and this visibility layer is the logical next step.
Keep an eye on your subagents
The longer wait for native voice input in VS Code is finally over. The built-in dictation feature kills the need for the third-party Speech extension, running Microsoft's offline Nemotron model locally across chat, editors, and the integrated terminal. A single microphone session routes dictated text to whichever panel has focus, so you won't end up yelling at your terminal while trying to edit a config file.
Settings: dictation.enabled, dictation.showTranscript, dictation.experimental.llmCleanup
Audio never leaves your machine. You can toggle a live transcript with dictation.showTranscript, and there's an LLM cleanup option that feeds the raw transcript through Copilot to strip filler words and fix formatting. If cleanup isn't available, VS Code falls back to the raw transcript. It's a smart middle ground that gives you polished output without sacrificing the privacy promise.
Support is pinned to specific platforms: Windows x64 and Arm64, Linux x64 and Arm64 (glibc 2.34+), and macOS on Apple Silicon only. The Intel Mac restriction likely comes down to the Nemotron model's optimization targets. If you're on an older Intel machine, you'll still need the old Speech extension. Web builds aren't supported either.
It's worth noting that Microsoft's been pushing voice into nearly every surface of its Copilot ecosystem for the past year. VS Code finally catching up to that rhythm makes sense, even if the Apple Silicon lock means you can't take it to a 2020 MacBook Pro.
Built-in dictation ships (experimental)
A new hybrid Markdown editor lands in the Agents window. It renders previews, lets you edit source inline, and supports agent-actionable comments, which are structured annotations that an agent can read and act on. You can switch between the hybrid view and plain text via Reopen Editor With. It's experimental, but it points toward a workflow where documentation doubles as executable instructions for AI agents.
That Markdown-as-instruction pattern is the kind of thing that sounds slick until you actually try to manage merge conflicts between human-readable docs and machine-actionable tags. But the architecture is solid, and the workbench.editor.markdownDefaultEditorInAgentsWindow setting gives you a clear off switch if you'd rather keep your agents in source code.
Python Environments is now the default environment manager in Stable after hitting its 100 percent rollout target. The underlying shifts include deferred Conda discovery, coalesced native environment scans, and a fallback to the last-known interpreter when refreshes time out. Terminal users get an opt-out for the columns-by-rows resize overlay, and screen reader users can preserve cursor position in the accessible view with a new setting.
There's also a chat Easter egg. Type /vscode-pet for a companion pet that responds to prompts. Not essential, but a nice break from the agent-heavy release.
Contributor Simon Siefke patched six memory leaks spanning the task service, terminal process manager, and debug model. Kaidesuyoo also fixed a performance regression tied to modern UI styling.
It's a solid incremental update that leans into the agent-first direction Microsoft established in 1.130. The subagent visibility layer and local dictation are the real wins here, though the experimental flags and platform restrictions mean it's not ready for every workflow yet. The Markdown-as-instruction pattern is interesting, though it'll take time to see if it actually catches on outside of niche agent workflows.
Head here to grab the full release notes and platform-specific packages.
