James Montemagno

Designing for Everyone: Accessibility in VS Code with Megan Rogge

November 17th, 2025  |  28 mins 41 secs

Megan Rogge, Software Engineer on VS Code, joins James to explore how accessibility is woven into the culture and engineering practices of Visual Studio Code. From screen reader support to sound signals and contrast themes, this episode reveals the thoughtful design behind features that empower every developer.

Beyond the Keynote: VS Code at GitHub Universe 2025

November 10th, 2025  |  45 mins 6 secs

agents, github universe, planning agent, release

What does it look like for VS Code to be an AI-native editor? How is it evolving with agents running locally in the editor, in a CLI, in the cloud, or even from other companies? Pierce breaks down every part of what was announced for VS Code at GitHub Universe and goes behind the scenes of his part of the keynote.

Behind the Scenes of VS Code’s Planning Agent with Bhavya U

November 3rd, 2025  |  22 mins 41 secs

The new planning agent is here to help you plan out your next tasks, but how does it differ from todos? When would you want to use the planning agent, and how does it actually work? Bhavya, software engineer on the VS Code team, sits down to break it all down.

Building & Scaling Open Source Communities with Steve Francia

October 27th, 2025  |  25 mins 42 secs

open source

Steve Francia joins the pod to talk about building, scaling, and supporting large open source projects and communities from MongoDB, Go, Cobra, Hugo, and so much more.

Mastering Chat Modes in VS Code with Burke Holland

October 20th, 2025  |  26 mins 55 secs

agents, beast mode, chat modes

Burke joins the pod to talk about chat modes, how they are evolving, how you can use them as agents, and how he created Beast mode for GPT 4.1 that revolutionized working with this model.

Building agent memory for VS Code with Harald Kirschner

October 13th, 2025  |  25 mins 41 secs

agent mode, apis, extensions

Harald joins James to talk through customizing chat, agents, and GitHub Copilot with custom instructions, prompts, and modes. We go deeper int new proposed APIs that pulls them together to create agents and how Harald implement agent memory and shipped it as an extension!

Impact of AI on How We Learn to Code with Scott Tolinski

October 6th, 2025  |  23 mins 12 secs

ai, education

James sits down with Scott Tolinski, of Syntax podcast, to talk about how developer education has changed over the years since he started creating tutorials, how AI is impacting how we learn to code and problem solve, and what the future looks like.

The Origins & Evolution of the GitHub MCP Registry

September 29th, 2025  |  22 mins 58 secs

mcp, registry

Toby sits down to talk about MCP, model context protocol, why it is important, how the steering commit across companies helps form the open standard, and how the MCP registry standard came to be and how GitHub and VS Code are leveraging it.

The Future of Coding Agents in VS Code

September 22nd, 2025  |  22 mins 24 secs

background tasks, coding agents, github coding agent

Brigit and Josh join the podcast to talk about the latest enhancements to coding agents, aka background tasks, aka background agents in VS Code. They break down why you would use them, how to use them, and their future.

Life of a VS Code SWE Intern with Christy Nguyen

September 15th, 2025  |  25 mins 57 secs

git, git worktrees, internship, source control

Christy joins us to talk about her internship on the VS Code team, her journey, how she landed the internship, how she developed git worktree support in VS Code, and what's next for her.

Language Model Chat Provider (aka BYOK) API with Logan Ramos

September 8th, 2025  |  17 mins 8 secs

byok, extensions

This week, VS Code engineer Logan Ramos joins the pod to talk about Bring Your Own Key... or Bring Your Own Model... the ability to configure models from several providers including Azure, OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic, Google, and more. We talk about how and why you would actually use this functionality, but more importantly a new API for extenders to bring ANY model directly into VS Code!

Building a MCP to Build VS Code & The Impact of AI on Kent C. Dodds

September 1st, 2025  |  57 mins 34 secs

mcp, playwright

This week, VS Code engineer Tyler Leonhardt joins the podcast to give an update on the latest enhancements to MCP authentication for developers and how the VS Code team is leveraging MCP to help developer VS Code with help of the Playwright, GitHub, and other MCP servers. James also got a chance to sit down with Kent C. Dodds at the MCP Dev Days to better understand how MCP is evolving his workflow and how he sees its impact going forward.

Iteration Plan for August & Re-writing Terminal Tools

August 25th, 2025  |  31 mins 27 secs

planning, terminal

What features are coming to VS Code in the next update? The August iteration plan is completely done in the open. How does it work, how you look at it, and how to you get involved? We also sit down with VS Code engineer Daniel Imms about vast improvements coming to the Terminal for agent mode integraiton.

Hello GPT-5 & GPT-5 mini

August 18th, 2025  |  18 mins 33 secs

beast mode, gpt-5, release

GPT-5 and GPT-5 mini are here inside of agent mode in Visual Studio Code. We discuss these new models and new features for developers including tasks lists, manage models, and beast mode!