{"id":255938,"date":"2026-03-31T09:00:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T16:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/?p=255938"},"modified":"2026-03-31T08:58:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T15:58:16","slug":"visual-studio-march-update-build-your-own-custom-agents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/visual-studio-march-update-build-your-own-custom-agents\/","title":{"rendered":"Visual Studio March Update – Build Your Own Custom Agents"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month’s Visual Studio update gives you new ways to customize GitHub Copilot. Custom agents allow you to build specialized Copilot agents tailored to your team’s workflow, backed by the tools and knowledge sources that matter to your project. Alongside that, agent skills bring reusable instruction sets, and a new find_symbol<\/em> tool gives agents language-aware navigation across your codebase.<\/p>\n

Beyond agents, we’re continuing to invest in the diagnostics experience with Copilot-powered profiling directly from Test Explorer and real-time perf tips during debugging. Security gets a boost too, with Copilot now helping you fix NuGet vulnerabilities right from Solution Explorer.<\/p>\n

Download Visual Studio 2026 Insiders<\/a> to try these features today.<\/p>\n

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Build your own custom agents<\/h3>\n
Want Copilot to follow your team’s coding standards, run your build pipeline, or query your internal docs? Custom agents make that possible. They’re specialized Copilot agents defined as .agent.md<\/em> files in your repository, with full access to workspace awareness, code understanding, tools, your preferred model, and MCP connections to external knowledge sources.<\/p>\n
Drop an .agent.md<\/em>\u00a0file into .github\/agents\/<\/em>\u00a0in your repo, and it shows up in the agent picker ready to use.<\/p>\n