Visual Assist 2025.4 is now released and is available to download.
VA 2025.4 is one of our biggest releases to date. This release features 60+ new code inspections checkers for C++ safety. We also overhauled the UI for key features and added a new welcome experience for first time installs, and most remarkably, we’re introducing our AI integration: VA Intelligence.
You can download the release now by visiting our website download page but we highly recommend reading through our release post to learn about everything we added and how to enable and use them.
Table of Contents
Added new code inspections checkers for C++ safety (with new preset profiles)
New code inspections checkers based on Clang Tidy have also been added as the community adapts to emerging requirements for C++ safety. This release adds an extensive set of 60+ code inspection checkers specifically focused on coding safety. According to our lead dev, the team has “never had anything close to this many checkers in one release.”
The C++ safety checkers are based on a subset of C++ coding practices and guidelines designed to eliminate common sources of bugs, undefined behavior, and security vulnerabilities. It emphasizes memory safety, type safety, and preventing common programming errors that can lead to crashes, security exploits, or unpredictable behavior. These checkers analyze your code and identify potential issues related to:
- Memory safety violations
- Improper use of move semantics
- Type safety concerns
- Performance issues
- Other C++ best practices
Why add these inspections now
C++ gives developers direct control over memory and system resources — but that same control makes it easy to introduce memory corruption, undefined behavior, or data races. Unlike newer languages (Rust, Swift), C++ provides no built-in memory safety guarantees.
The C++ standards committee has been hard at work to introduce changes to alleviate this problem. For instance, the committee is pushing for the adoption of C++ profiles which are subsets or configurations of C++ that disable or restrict the unsafe portions of the language.
As the C++ standards committee and industry move toward “profiles” for safer C++, most developers still work in existing, large, mixed-quality codebases. They can’t immediately switch to a strict safety profile — but they can start improving safety incrementally.
That’s where our code inspection tools come in. They give developers a bridge between current C++ practice and future safety standards by using a convenient and automatic way of detecting unsafe or non-conforming patterns of code.
How code inspections work
Code inspections are sensors added by Visual Assist that automatically work as you write and navigate your code. Visual Assist’s code inspections function like real-time diagnostics for your codebase. They quietly monitor your work as you write, surfacing potential issues early—just as system sensors in modern machines flag anomalies before they affect performance.
There are generally two types of code inspections:
- Notifications
These checkers catch potential issues and simply alert you to potential issues before they become bugs in production - Automatic Fixes
Many checkers can automatically prompt you to apply fixes to your code with a single action or click.
The checkers alert you based on the severity of the detected issues. This will show up in 5 tiers with different warning levels (colors). You can also customize the severity level for each code issue (see image below).
Enable code inspections by going to VAssistX – Options – Code Inspection – Enable code inspection.
Preset options for active inspections
In the same dialog window, users can now swap between predefined checker sets to match their project needs:
- VA Default: The standard set of Visual Assist checkers
- C++ safety: The set of new C++ safety focused checkers
- Combined (Recommended): Combines the default VA code inspections and the new C++ safety checkers
- Custom: Enable/disable individual checkers as needed
Full list of new C++ safety checkers
Here is the complete list of the added code checkers added in VA 2025.4. Some checkers may have more than one name/category. They will be searchable in the settings dialogue to make it easier to find specific checkers and configure them as you wish.
| Category | Checkers |
| Core Analysis | CallAndMessage, DivideZero, NonNullParamChecker, NullDereference, UndefinedBinaryOperatorResult, uninitialized.Assign/Branch/UndefReturn |
| C++ Specific | NewDelete, NewDeleteLeaks, Move, SelfAssignment, PureVirtualCall, InnerPointer |
| Nullability | NullableDereferenced, NullablePassedToNonnull, NullPassedToNonnull, NullReturnedFromNonnull |
| CERT Standards | err33-c, err58-cpp, dcl54-cpp, msc50-cpp, msc51-cpp, oop54-cpp |
| C++ Core Guidelines | no-malloc, pro-type-reinterpret-cast, pro-type-static-cast-downcast, avoid-c-arrays, narrowing-conversions, owning-memory, special-member-functions, init-variables, noexcept-destructor, noexcept-move-operations |
| Bug Prevention | use-after-move, misplaced-operator-in-strlen-in-alloc, misplaced-pointer-arithmetic-in-alloc, undefined-memory-manipulation, suspicious-memory-comparison, suspicious-memset-usage, suspicious-realloc-usage, shared/unique-ptr-array-mismatch, stringview-nullptr, integer-division |
| Modernization | use-nullptr, use-noexcept, use-default-member-init, use-equals-default, avoid-c-arrays |
| Performance | noexcept-destructor, noexcept-swap, trivially-destructible |
| Miscellaneous | throw-by-value-catch-by-reference, unused-parameters, new-delete-overloads, non-copyable-objects, static-assert |
| Concurrency | mt-unsafe |
UI overhaul for core navigation and refactoring features
The first thing you’ll notice when you install and start Visual Assist 2025.4 for the first time is that the visual interface for many of your favorite features have changed.
The user interface for core navigation and refactoring features have been updated to a more polished, modern look. In regular Visual Assist fashion, it is still designed to be as unobtrusive as possible. At the same time, it’s now more descriptive and distinct enough so you’ll know exactly when you’re using a VA feature or not.
For functional changes, we’ve adjusted the action buttons on dialogs to be more descriptive and purposeful. All additional options have also been moved to a categorized settings menu and can be opened quickly using the keyboard shortcut: Alt. These changes should make VA easier to use and have improved consistency of expected actions across its core features.
Here is the list of the features with updated UI:
- Open File in Solution
- Rename
- Find Symbol
- Change Signature
- Browse Members
FIND SYMBOL: Dialog buttons now callout the action and settings moved to a menu.
Introducing VA Intelligence: Symbol explanation with AI
We’re happy to announce the name of our very own local AI integration: VA Intelligence. This will be a fully local AI opt-in service powered by Olamma and Gemma.
Its first feature is the ability to explain and contextualize symbols in a single click with the help of AI/LLMs. You can use this to help understand unfamiliar code by analyzing symbols across the entire project and getting a brief description of what it does.
VA Intelligence’s explain symbol provides you the context and description of the symbol in the Find References dialog.
How it works: Select the code or symbol you want to explain, open the quick actions menu (Shift + Alt + Q), and choose Explain ‘symbol’ with AI. The explanation of the symbol will be provided in a find references dialog.
Select a symbol and open the quick actions menu (Shift + Alt + Q) or click the tomato icon upon hover then click “Explain ‘symbol’ with AI”
For security and safety, it is exclusively an opt-in feature—you need to explicitly give permission to both install and run the AI. For the complete installation and usage instructions, read the section below.
Furthermore, it is installed and runs entirely on your local machine using your GPU—no data leaves your computer, ensuring your code remains private and secure.
- Permissions: Navigate to VAssistX – Options – VA Intelligence – Enable Explain with AI + Install
- Disk space: At least 9GB of free space
- Minimum hardware requirements: GPU with at least 12GB VRAM. More details here.
New updated welcome page for new users
Visual Assist’s new welcome page provides quick insight into what’s new in a release, the latest tutorials, and an accessible feedback form.
For first time installers and after an update release, a new page will now welcome you to Visual Assist. This page shows what’s new in the release, provides an easy way to explore tutorials, and learn useful shortcuts.
There is also a special feedback widget that you can use to instantly send feedback straight to the dev team’s inbox. You can be as brief (or as comprehensive) as you want with the feedback you sent.
As it’s a new feature, we recommend submitting your concerns and feedback through this new widget—it’s more visible and makes it easier to improve for the devteam.
For existing users, you can always bring up the welcome page via VAssistX – Help – Show Welcome Page.
Bug Fixes and minor improvements
- Quality improvements pertaining to Visual Studio 2022 support.
Availability & Feedback
This release was made available on October 21st and can be downloaded via the download page. As always, we appreciate feedback, especially on recently introduced features and the UI changes we introduced.
Update now to an active license to utilize all the features and fixes in this release. And if you have any questions or encounter any issues, feel free to reach out to [email protected].