Chat participant API

We have finalized the Language Model and Chat Participant API 🚀
Thus, you can now publish your extensions to the VS Marketplace. This API is finalized in VS Code Insiders, and will be finalized in VS Code Stable in July. In your package.json, you should set

"engines": {
	"vscode": "^1.90.0"
},

and VS Code Stable will gracefully handle your extensions and ignore your usage of Language Model and Chat API until the API gets finalized in Stable in July. Full docs https://code.visualstudio.com/api/extension-guides/chat

We are excited to see what you build ✨

-- Proposal dts: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/main/src/vscode-dts/vscode.proposed.chatParticipant.d.ts

Extension authors can subscribe to this issue to get updates about the proposed chat agent API. There may still be breaking changes coming, and I will post here whenever a breaking change is made.

I'm also interested in feedback about how you might use this API.

Current TODOs

Need to enable agents to identify sessions uniquely and store state, including across a window reload
Should be able to use shouldRepopulate for agents
- Maybe this should be the default behavior for agents
ChatAgentReplyFollowup should parameterize the agent and slash command names, don't require the agent to include them in the prompt as text
- Maybe this goes for variables too, but variables like #file are complex
Enable references and progress messages from chat variable resolvers #204539
ChatAgentContentReference needs to support https URIs #203822
Change the history context shape to be a flat list of messages, instead of request/response pairs
Understand how duplicate agent IDs should be handled
~~Enable agents to resolve a variable value on-demand, instead of resolving all variables before invoking the agent~~

Add a persist flag to ChatAgentProgressMessage for it to stay visible with a ✔️ even when more content has been added.
- This would be useful when you want the progress message to remain and show what happened, eg in representing a function call. I've seen multiple extension authors add their own version of this just with text.
Better support for /help with chat agents #197081

ChatAgentCommandFollowup should become a progress message instead of a followup
In history, agents have to parse agent names and slash commands from the raw ChatMessage. They shouldn't have to understand the input syntax- the type in history should be related to the request and progress/result types that we already have.
Add generic type parameter for the type of the result, which can include custom properties
'variables' proposal is referenced from chatAgents2, need to merge it in
Merge ChatAgentTask and ChatAgentProgressMessage #200598

November additions

Send a ChatAgentProgressMessage to show progress steps on your response. @workspace uses this.

vscode/src/vscode-dts/vscode.proposed.chatAgents2.d.ts

Lines 261 to 266 in e4cb2cf

    
           	/** 
        
           	 * Is displayed in the UI to communicate steps of progress to the user. Should be used when the agent may be slow to respond, e.g. due to doing extra work before sending the actual request to the LLM. 
        
           	 */ 
        
           	export interface ChatAgentProgressMessage { 
        
           		message: string; 
        
           	}

Implement a ChatAgentCompletionItemProvider for variables to show up that are only for this agent. Other chat variables are global.

vscode/src/vscode-dts/vscode.proposed.chatAgents2Additions.d.ts

Lines 58 to 60 in e4cb2cf

    
           export interface ChatAgentCompletionItemProvider { 
        
           	provideCompletionItems(query: string, token: CancellationToken): ProviderResult<ChatAgentCompletionItem[]>; 
        
           }

Has any research been done into the agent protocol for this?

Do you have any example use cases of ChatAgentCompletionItemProvider?

Do you have more information about the options to access.makeRequest?
Do you have more information about ChatAgentUsedContext and MappedEditsProvider?

bion howard (@bionicles)

bion howard (@bionicles) I wouldn't rely on Copilot Chat for legal advice, talking to a lawyer may be a good idea.

Nicholas Tindle (@ntindle) I think that's a different use of the term "agent" than how we're using it here, where it's just a UX paradigm for an extension that can execute a chat query. That might continue to be a point of confusion as people work more on AI agents that plan and use tools to accomplish a task in multiple steps.

Dan O'Brien (@InTheCloudDan) Not a good example, sorry, I'll try to add one to the API sample this month. The API might need a little more polish.

Peli de Halleux (@pelikhan) The current concept is that those options could be used differently by different chat providers. The copilot chat provider takes a numeric option n.

Re: MappedEditsProvider- I think this is sort of in an experimental state, there is one that is implemented by the Copilot Chat extension and just tries to fix the indentation of pasted codeblocks based on the indentation in ChatAgentUsedContext.

How would you feel about calling it one of the following then sidekick, partner, assistant, or tool?

The name confusion I can see continuing

roblourens

roblourens duh

Breaking change in the next Insiders:

Renamed ChatVariableContext#message to prompt

vscode/src/vscode-dts/vscode.proposed.chatAgents2.d.ts

Lines 420 to 425 in b8baf8e

    
           	export interface ChatVariableContext { 
        
           		/** 
        
           		 * The message entered by the user, which includes this variable. 
        
           		 */ 
        
           		prompt: string; 
        
           	}

Dan O'Brien (@InTheCloudDan)

Dan O'Brien (@InTheCloudDan) good catch. I just fixed it. Thanks

As Rob said we have finalized the Language Model and Chat Participant API

Thus, you can now publish your extensions to the VS Marketplace. This API is finalized in VS Code Insiders, and will be finalized in VS Code Stable in July. Thus we suggest that you use an engines: ^1.90.0 property in your package.json, and VS Code Stable will gracefully handle your extensions and ignore your usage of Language Model and Chat API until the API gets finalized in Stable in July.

Full docs https://code.visualstudio.com/api/extension-guides/chat

We are excited to see what you build ✨

Thus I am going ahead and closing this issue. We will create follow-up issues for API that is still in proposed state. Here's the issue for Variables #212995

Two more issues to follow for API updates. I'm very interested to hear what you would want to use custom chat variables or tools for, so please let me know!

Congratulations! been watching this for months so thrilled

jasonwang82

jasonwang82 yes. But, this is unrelated to chat participant API.

Is it possible to stream results in our Markdown that include a dropdown?

We want to add a "References" collapsable section that is closed by default, similar to how Copilot shows "Used 1 reference >" here

I dont seem to see that option in the code here

vscode/src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/chatListRenderer.ts

Line 594 in 101ea2a

renderableResponse.forEach((part, index) => {

You can call reference on the response stream to add to that list, but you can't add your own.

We just did a breakout session at Microsoft build on Chat Participant API.
Make sure to check it out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI7kjWzIiTM

roblourens

Yeah, that makes sense. I'll add that

Hi roblourens is there any tracking link for this?

#199908 (comment)

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Chat participant API #199908

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	/**
	* Is displayed in the UI to communicate steps of progress to the user. Should be used when the agent may be slow to respond, e.g. due to doing extra work before sending the actual request to the LLM.
	*/
	export interface ChatAgentProgressMessage {
	message: string;
	}

	export interface ChatAgentCompletionItemProvider {
	provideCompletionItems(query: string, token: CancellationToken): ProviderResult<ChatAgentCompletionItem[]>;
	}

	export interface ChatVariableContext {
	/**
	* The message entered by the user, which includes this variable.
	*/
	prompt: string;
	}

Chat participant API #199908

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roblourens commented on Dec 3, 2023

November additions

bionicles commented on Dec 7, 2023

ntindle commented on Dec 9, 2023

InTheCloudDan commented on Dec 10, 2023

pelikhan commented on Dec 11, 2023

roblourens commented on Dec 13, 2023

ntindle commented on Dec 13, 2023

bionicles commented on Dec 19, 2023

roblourens commented on Jan 12, 2024

234 remaining items

isidorn commented on May 17, 2024

isidorn commented on May 17, 2024

roblourens commented on May 23, 2024

undesicimo commented on May 23, 2024

jasonwang82 commented on May 23, 2024

isidorn commented on May 23, 2024

matv-stripe commented on May 23, 2024

roblourens commented on May 23, 2024

isidorn commented on May 24, 2024

amitjoshi438 commented on Jun 17, 2024

roblourens commented on Jun 18, 2024

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