Microsoft's Visual Studio 2026 brings an async cloud agent workflow to Copilot Chat, mirroring a capability already present in VS Code. A developer assigns a task — such as implementing a feature or fixing a bug — and Copilot runs the work in a cloud-hosted environment without requiring the IDE to stay open. The result is surfaced as a pull request ready for review. The shift toward persistent background agents marks a meaningful change in how IDEs are used: rather than an interactive pair-programming session, the developer becomes a reviewer rather than a driver for routine tasks. Teams that already use VS Code's equivalent workflow will find the experience familiar; those on Visual Studio for .NET-heavy stacks gain the same capability without switching editors.