These are the agent plugins the VS Code team uses to build VS Code — code reviews, PR workflows, notification triage, and code quality guardrails, all running inside Copilot's agent mode.
We're sharing them because they're useful and because we think seeing how a team actually works with AI agents is more helpful than docs alone.
Install any plugin directly in VS Code:
- Run Chat: Install Plugin from Source
- Enter
microsoft/vscode-team-kit - Pick the plugin you want
If you install one thing, make it review-areas. It runs an area-focused code review after any non-trivial change — correctness, security, tests, performance — and catches things a single-pass review misses. Just say "review my code" in agent mode.
If you install three things, add monitor-pr (watches CI and Copilot's review in the background so you can move on) and handy-commands (slash commands for creating PRs, addressing review comments, and fixing issues end-to-end).
| Plugin | What it does |
|---|---|
| review-areas | Fans out parallel subagents across correctness, tests, security, performance, and product — then synthesizes only the findings worth blocking a PR for |
| model-council | Sends the same review to GPT, Claude, and Gemini independently, then surfaces where they agree and where they disagree |
| review-plan | Reviews implementation plans before you start coding — checks completeness, feasibility, sequencing, scope creep, and risk |
| Plugin | What it does |
|---|---|
| monitor-pr | Launches background terminals that watch CI and Copilot's code review, then notifies the agent when either finishes — no polling, no tab-switching |
| handy-commands | Slash commands for the things you do every day: /commit-and-pr, /pr-comments, /fix-issue |
| Plugin | What it does |
|---|---|
| github-inbox | Smart notification triage with sub-agents for review, investigation, and memory — groups by repo, applies rules, acts on your behalf |
| Plugin | What it does |
|---|---|
| ban-ast | Bans code patterns via Tree Sitter AST queries — intercepts edits and rejects banned patterns unless the change includes a justification |
| Plugin | What it does |
|---|---|
| build-health | Analyzes VS Code's rolling build pipeline on Azure DevOps — finds failures, shows break/fix transitions, links to commits |
| component-explorer | Sets up fixture-based visual testing with MCP-powered screenshot comparison for UI components |
Every plugin here runs in our daily workflow. A few patterns that emerged:
- review-areas after every non-trivial change. It's the default. We run it before pushing, not after — fixing issues locally is cheaper than addressing PR comments.
- review-plan before implementing. Plan-mode produces a plan; review-plan stress-tests it. Catching a bad assumption before coding saves hours.
- monitor-pr to stay in flow. Push the PR, start the monitor, move to the next task. The agent tells you when something needs attention.
- ban-ast for rules the team agrees on. Instead of documenting "don't use X" in a wiki nobody reads, we encode it as a hook that blocks the edit and explains why.
We'd love contributions. Each plugin is self-contained in its own directory with a .plugin/plugin.json, skills, and optionally hooks or scripts — look at any existing plugin for the pattern.
A few guidelines:
- New plugin? Open an issue first to discuss scope. We keep the collection focused, so a quick conversation helps.
- Improving an existing plugin? PRs welcome — bug fixes, better docs, new eval cases.
- Have a workflow idea but not sure how to build it? Open an issue describing the problem. This repo is set up for AI contributions, so a clear description often goes further than you'd expect.
Plugins work independently, but some are better together:
- review-areas → monitor-pr — Review your code, push the PR, monitor CI and Copilot's review in one flow.
- review-plan → review-areas — Review the plan before coding, review the code after. Catches issues at both stages.
- ban-ast + review-areas — Ban patterns enforce rules on every edit; review-areas catches what slips through.
- handy-commands + monitor-pr —
/pr-commentsto address feedback, then monitor the resulting CI run.
review-areas vs. model-council: Both do code review. review-areas uses one model with parallel area-focused subagents. model-council sends the same review to GPT, Claude, and Gemini for consensus. Use review-areas daily; reach for model-council on high-stakes changes.