Microsoft’s Visual Studio (VS) Code has been one of the most successful OSS projects in GitHub. Visual Studio Code combines the simplicity of a code editor with what developers need for their core edit-build debug cycle. It provides comprehensive code editing, navigation, and understanding support along with lightweight debugging, a rich extensibility model, and lightweight integration with existing tools.
Today, we're announcing plans to make VS Code an open source AI editor.
We believe AI development should stay true to VS Code's core principles: open, collaborative, and community-driven. Let's build the future of software development together.https://t.co/C3ffio6X88 pic.twitter.com/sZj9VJxvlE
— Visual Studio Code (@code) May 19, 2025
The company has now announced its plans to make VS Code an open-source AI editor. It is revealed that the company plans to open-source the code in the GitHub Copilot Chat extension under the MIT license, then carefully refactor the relevant components of the extension into VS Code core.
Why open source now?
The company has observed shifts in AI development over the last few months, which motivated them to transition their AI development in VS Code from closed to open source.
Shifts observed in AI development-
- Large language models have significantly improved, mitigating the need for “secret sauce” prompting strategies.
- The most popular and effective UX treatments for AI interactions are now common across editors. We want to enable the community to refine and build on these common UI elements by making them available in a stable, open codebase.
- An ecosystem of open-source AI tools and VS Code extensions has emerged. We want to make it easier for these extension authors to build, debug, and test their extensions. This is especially challenging today without access to the source code in the Copilot Chat extension.
- We’ve gotten a lot of questions about the data that is collected by AI editors. Open-sourcing the Copilot Chat extension enables you to see the data we collect, increasing transparency.
- Malicious actors are increasingly targeting AI developer tools. Throughout VS Code’s history as OSS, community issues and PRs have helped us find and fix security issues quickly.
In the coming weeks, the company will work to open-source the code in the GitHub Copilot Chat extension and refactor AI features from the extension into VS Code core. They will also make their prompt test infrastructure open source to ensure that community PRs can build and pass tests.
