Iteration Plan for March 2025

[kieferrm]

This plan captures our work in March 2025. This is a 4-week iteration. We will ship in early April.

Since mid-December, GitHub Copilot has been available for free for everyone. This allows us to treat AI support as an out-of-the-box experience in VS Code. Consequently, going forward, we'll cover our client-side work for Copilot in this plan, similarly to how we have been tracking our work on our Remote Extensions over the last years.

Endgame

• March 24, 2025: Endgame begins
• March 28, 2025: Endgame done

The endgame details for this iteration are tracked here.

Plan Items

Below is a summary of the top level plan items.

Legend of annotations:

Mark	Description
🏃	work in progress
✋	blocked task
💪	stretch goal for this iteration
🔴	missing issue reference
🔵	more investigation required to remove uncertainty
⚫	under discussion within the team
⬛	a large work item, larger than one iteration

Accessibility

• Accessibility issues, see query @meganrogge team

Workbench

• Support macOS Configuration Profiles as a policy backend vscode#148942 @joshspicer
• Adopt improved Settings editor search algorithm vscode#243091 @rzhao271

Code Editor

• 🏃 Investigation: Use tree-sitter for grammar colorization vscode#210475 @alexr00 @hediet
  • Support injected languages: TypeScript + RegExp vscode#244441 @alexr00
  • Add CSS tree-sitter grammar vscode#244442 @alexr00
• 🏃 Explore GPU rendering of the code editor vscode#221145 @Tyriar @hediet
• 🏃 Add support for variable line heights vscode#147067 @aiday-mar
• 🏃 💪 Add support for multiple fonts in the editor vscode#237346 @aiday-mar

Notebook Editor / Jupyter Notebooks

• Shortcut for creating virtual environment with ipykernel preinstall for default Python interpreter on macOS/Linux @DonJayamanne vscode-jupyter#16481
• Bump minimal version of jupyter notebook document to 4.5 (supporting cell ids) vscode#243094 @amunger

Languages / Python

• 🏃 Implement package install with permissions for Python Environments vscode-python-environments#136 @eleanorjboyd @karthiknadig
• Implement startup activation vscode-python#24759 @karthiknadig
• 💪 cpython upstream fix to adjust terminal cursor to correct place python#126131 @anthonykim1

Source Control

• Support repository name in status bar vscode#244255 @lszomoru

Terminal

• 🏃 Improve upon terminal completions query @meganrogge @Tyriar
• 🏃 Terminal REPL completions using LSP vscode#241167 @anthonykim1 @Tyriar
• Finalize shell type API vscode#230165 @anthonykim1
• 🏃 Update Conpty in VS Code vscode#224488 @Tyriar @deepak1556

Tasks

• Task status API vscode#241772 @meganrogge

API

• API proposals: query @jrieken @mjbvz
• API finalization: query @jrieken @mjbvz
• Support encoding-related utils in extension host vscode#242547 @bpasero

Extensions

• Introduce new remote server flag to always redirect default extension installation to workbench vscode-remote-release#9994 @joshspicer
• ✋ Adopt pre-release extension query API support vscode#243072 @sandy081
• Adopt latest extension version API support vscode#243073 @sandy081

Extension Contributions

• Show Checkout main checkbox in PR creation view vscode-pull-request-github#6706 @alexr00

Remote Extension Contributions / SSH Extension

• 💪 Resolve unique connection issues vscode-remote-release#10412, vscode-remote-release#6319, vscode-remote-release#6600 @joshspicer

GitHub Copilot

• Improve Copilot Edits and agentic mode @kieferrm team
• Improve next edit suggestions @alexdima team
• 🏃 Make language-specific context available to Copilot inline completions @dbaeumer
• 🏃 💪 Explore anchored quick widget for mouse interactions to attach context vscode#238095 @TylerLeonhardt
• Support drag and drop images from web vscode#240025 @justschen
• Improve git commit message generation vscode-copilot-release#4877 @lszomoru
• Polish Copilot status bar indicator vscode#242548 @bpasero

Engineering

• 💪 🏃 Support building the monaco-editor AMD variant from new sources vscode#234114 @hediet @alexdima
• ✋ 🔴 Implement the full macOS build job in arm64 @lszomoru
• ✋ 🔴 Support macOS jobs in PR builds @lszomoru
• Remove legacy server vscode#231623 @deepak1556
• 🏃 Ensure pipelines can be retriggered vscode#231139 @joaomoreno

Electron

• Ensure JS stacks are captured when window is unresponsive vscode#240178 @deepak1556
• 🏃 Electron: Page content resizes with noticable delay electron#36280 @deepak1556
• 🏃 Reenable PlzDedicatedWorker vscode#240180 @deepak1556

Documentation

• Update Copilot best practices doc vscode-docs#8013 @ntrogh
• Restructure the User Guide ToC section vscode-docs#8126 @ntrogh

---

Deferred

• 💪 Finalize Related code vscode#126932 @connor4312
• VSCode freezing when adding folder to workspace while working on remote Linux machine vscode-remote-release#10168 @joshspicer
• 🏃 Enable extension signature verification by default on Linux vscode#239579 @sandy081
• 💪 Explore computing the indentation level using tree-sitter's AST vscode#208985 @aiday-mar

[iwangbowen]

Always looking forward to new features🫠

[gjsjohnmurray]

Another iteration of disappointment

#240160 (comment)

[BartolomeSintes]

Could you pin this issue, as usual? Thanks

[sayo96]

Any chances you would be able to fix the paste being awfully slow on this update?

[gjsjohnmurray]

Any chances you would be able to fix the paste being awfully slow on this update?

#240126 (comment)

[tinder-tannerbennett]

I'm here to second @gjsjohnmurray's concern. Kind of crazy that there's no way to bypass "ignored/excluded" file/search settings with findFiles() at the moment. Would love to see those put into the next iteration plan 🙏🏻

[FidelusAleksander]

Hey @kieferrm

I've been tracking label:chat-mcp issues and testing in the Insiders version.
Do you have any estimates in mind when first version of MCP for Copilot Chat will be available in the stable version? Does this come out early April together with Agent Mode?

[kieferrm]

@FidelusAleksander we'll decide after this week's endgame.