GitHub Copilot in VS Code, August Updates: /btw Side Chats and Continuing External Sessions

GitHub published a combined changelog on August 31, 2026 for Copilot in VS Code v1.132-v1.135, adding a side chat that shares the primary chat's context and prompt cache, and the ability to continue sessions created in other apps.

GitHub Copilot VS-Code coding AI-agents

GitHub published a combined changelog on August 31, 2026 covering Copilot updates in VS Code v1.132 through v1.135, shipped throughout August 2026¹.

Typing /btw opens a side chat that shares the primary chat’s context and prompt cache, while the primary chat keeps running¹
Recent Copilot or Claude agent sessions created in other applications can be viewed and continued from the Sessions list in VS Code. Agent customizations can also be installed from plugins following the Agent Plugins 1.0 standard¹
Hovering over the response footer shows input, cached input, and output token usage for each model in a chat turn¹

Also included: text search across the complete chat transcript with regex options, arranging chats side by side in horizontal or vertical groups, annotating HTML elements in the integrated browser, and multilingual dictation with an on-device model¹. Three items are explicitly marked experimental: opening the Agents window without GitHub sign-in, the /rubber-duck command, and the hybrid Markdown editor¹. Per-model token usage visible at the turn level gives a way to gauge consumption with changes to Copilot billing and chat data retention on the way.

Sources

GitHub Copilot in VS Code, August 2026 releases - GitHub official changelog (August 31, 2026)