VS Code 1.128: Copilot Vision Goes GA, Claude Agent Keyboard Shortcuts, and Quick Chats Without a Workspace

VS Code 1.128 landed July 8. The headliner is Copilot Vision graduating out of preview, but the release also adds a lot of polish to multi-chat agent sessions and removes a small but persistent annoyance: you no longer have to open a workspace before starting a chat.

Copilot Vision is now generally available

You can attach images and PDFs to chat by pasting them in, dragging and dropping, or right-clicking. Agents can also read images via tool calls, so you can hand a screenshot of a failing UI to an agent and have it reason about what it sees alongside the code.

This was in preview for a while. The GA release means it’s no longer behind a flag and the behavior is considered stable.

Quick chats without a workspace

Previously, the Agents window required an open folder before you could start a chat. 1.128 removes that restriction. Quick chats live in their own Chats section, persist across reloads, and launch via Cmd+K Cmd+N. Small thing, but useful if you want to ask something quickly without spinning up a project first.

Keyboard navigation for multi-chat sessions

The multi-chat feature introduced in 1.127 gets a full set of keyboard shortcuts in this release:

• Cmd+T — create a new chat
• Shift+Cmd+T — reopen a closed chat
• Shift+Cmd+] and Shift+Cmd+[ — navigate between chats
• Ctrl+Tab — switch chats
• Cmd+W — close the current chat tab
• Shift+Cmd+O — search open and closed chats

The Agents window also now supports deep links: vscode:// URLs that jump directly to a specific chat, which could be useful for linking to sessions from issue trackers or team wikis.

OS-level keyboard shortcuts

VS Code commands can now fire even when the app doesn’t have focus. You add a systemWide property to a keybinding in keybindings.json, and the shortcut works system-wide, not just when VS Code is the frontmost window. The obvious use case is triggering the Agents window or a quick chat from any context without having to switch apps first.

BYOK models for agent host sessions (experimental)

There’s a new experimental option to use bring-your-own-key language models in agent host sessions. It requires enabling chat.agentHost.byokModels.enabled and restarting the host process. Also new: custom temperature and top_p parameters for custom endpoint models, which helps with providers that have strict parameter requirements.

Browser tab placement

A minor but configurable addition: workbench.browser.newTabPlacement controls where integrated browser tabs open. Options are the active editor group (the default), a dedicated locked side group, or a separate auxiliary window. Useful for keeping browser previews from disrupting your editor layout.

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Full release notes are at code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_128.