Visual Assist 2026.5 is our biggest release yet. It expands two things we believe developers increasingly need help with: checking code across a large solution, and deciding where and when to use AI.
The headline of this release is project-wide code inspections, which extends Visual Assist’s Code Inspections beyond the file you’re working in. Select projects (or the entire solution), and findings stream in as the scan runs, with clang-tidy fixes flagged where available.
Then there’s VA Agent, our latest addition, which brings Claude Code, Codex, or the local VA Intelligence model into Visual Studio. You choose the agent and whether you want it answering questions or making edits.
Visual Assist 2026.5 is available now. Download Visual Assist.
At a glance
- Project-wide code inspection checks the projects you select across your solution, streams results as it runs, and applies clang-tidy fixes where available.
- VA Agent brings Claude Code, Codex, and the local Gemma 4 model into a dockable Visual Studio chat window.
- More daily improvements include quick refactoring toggles, dark title bars, compatibility fixes, security updates, and a range of navigation and editing fixes.
Project-wide code inspection checks your whole solution
Code Inspections help you catch problems in your code before they turn into bugs. They use a set of checks to flag unsafe code, questionable patterns, and other common mistakes.
Unlike AI suggestions, these checks are deterministic, so the same code gives the same results every time. That makes it easier to keep code health consistent, which gets harder to do by hand as a codebase grows.
Visual Assist 2026.5 adds project-wide code inspection, which lets you run Code Inspections across the projects you select or your entire Visual Studio solution.
Choose the projects to inspect, or include them all.
To start, open Extensions → VAssistX → Code Inspection → VA Code Inspection Results, then enable project-wide inspection for the current solution.
Results appear in the new VA Project-Wide Code Inspection window as the scan runs in the background. Visual Assist prioritizes files you’re actively working on and reparses incrementally as you edit.
You can start reviewing results without waiting for the entire scan to finish. Where a fix is available, you can apply it to a single finding or apply fixes in bulk.
Apply one fix, every fix in a file, or all of them, and suppress a checker at file, project, or solution level.
The release includes 94 curated checks, along with 300+ additional clang-tidy checks that you can enable yourself. Curated checks are those Whole Tomato has evaluated and selected for its default inspection experience. The additional checks give you access to the broader clang-tidy set but haven’t been vetted in the same way.
The same code gives the same result
Project-wide code inspection is rule-based. It runs clang-tidy rules against a clang-based parse of your code rather than asking a model to predict what’s wrong.
Put simply, it doesn’t try to predict the next part of code.
Given the same code and the same inspection rules, you get the same result on every run. That gives teams more confidence, since a result doesn’t depend on who ran the check or on which machine. And unlike AI-based checks, the result doesn’t change depending on which model reads the code.
If you want a deeper explanation of why we take this deterministic approach, see Deterministic by Design.
Findings from every selected project land in one window, grouped by project and file.
A refresher on what Code Inspections can catch
Project-wide inspection also makes this a good time to revisit what Visual Assist’s Code Inspections can already do.
The inspection set covers several kinds of problems, including C++ safety, modernization, readability, performance, bug-prone patterns, and include cleanup.
| Area | Example | What it helps catch |
|---|---|---|
| C++ safety | Safety-oriented clang-tidy checks | Patterns that can lead to unsafe or error-prone C++ |
| Modernization | modernize-* checks |
Older C++ idioms that can be replaced with more modern constructs |
| Readability | Readability checks | Patterns that make code harder to understand or maintain |
| Performance | Performance checks | Patterns that may create unnecessary work or inefficient code |
| Bug-prone code | Bug-prone checks | Common patterns associated with defects |
| Include Cleaner | Include analysis | Unnecessary or problematic includes |
There are also some changes to individual inspection settings in 2026.5. The check for overriding functions without override now has more configuration options, including AllowOverrideAndFinal.
Destructors are now also included in that check by default. Because the default scope changed, you may see new findings in code that was clean before.
We’ll be publishing a deeper look at the inspection system later, including the available checks and how to get more from them.
VA Agent brings your choice of AI into Visual Studio
The other major part of this release is VA Agent, a new part of VA Intelligence.
VA Agent sits with your other tool windows. Pick the agent, then choose Ask Mode or Edits allowed.
VA Agent is a chat window that connects AI agents to your code inside Visual Studio. Open Extensions → VAssistX → Tools → VA Agent and the agent window docks alongside your other Visual Studio tool windows. From there, you choose which agent you want to use and ask it to explain or change your code.
You can now connect your own Claude Code or Codex subscription. Install the provider’s CLI, sign in with your account, and VA Agent uses that agent for your queries.
There is also the local VA Intelligence model. In 2026.5, it moves from Gemma 3 to Gemma 4, running through Ollama 0.32.9 with a selectable model size. The model runs on your machine. Existing users also get a more reliable download that retries and resumes after a dropped connection.
VA Agent has two modes:
- Ask Mode is set up for questions and discussion.
- Edits allowed lets the agent change files directly, with undo available.
Ask Mode doesn’t function as a sandbox, so the usual advice still applies: use version control the way you would with any other agent working on your code.
VA Agent will keep changing, with new capabilities and refinements in upcoming releases. You can influence its direction by sending feedback on our Discord. We’d like to know how you use it in your own Visual Studio workflows as we build out what’s next.
VA Agent supports Visual Studio 2015 and later on Windows 7 SP1 and later.
Change Code with AI now runs through VA Agent
Change Code with AI, introduced in VA 2026.3, now runs inside VA Agent.
Select a portion of code in a file or let the agent read the file and the surrounding code. Change Code proposes a change in the new VA Agent window. You then apply the changes you want.
Describe the change you want and the proposal open in VA Agent.
You can review each proposed change in the chat and decide what makes it into your code.
By comparison, the Edits allowed mode gives the agent permission to change files directly. You can always use undo to revert these changes.
Change Code with AI now runs in VA Agent: the agent proposes changes as a diff, and you apply the ones you want.
Explain Code with AI replaced with VA Agent’s Ask Mode
Explain Code with AI has been removed in 2026.5.
To have AI explain a piece of code, ask VA Agent in Ask Mode instead. Name the symbol you’re interested in or paste the relevant snippet and ask the agent to explain it.
We’re keeping the workflow simple while we work on expanding the VA Agent experience.
Read and explain: To get an explanation, ask VA Agent in Ask Mode and name the symbol.
Small UI changes that make VA easier to use
Rename, Change Signature, and Encapsulate Field now show their current settings as quick toggles, so you can check and change them without leaving the dialog. The missing toggles in GoTo Member are back too.
Visual Assist also restores the Alt+key shortcuts for settings in Find Symbol in Solution and Open File in Solution.
And if you use a dark theme, Visual Assist dialogs now have dark title bars in Visual Studio 2017 and newer.
Rename - Rename, Change Signature, and Encapsulate Field now show their current settings as quick toggles.
Change Signature -Rename, Change Signature, and Encapsulate Field now show their current settings as quick toggles.
Encapsulate Field - Rename, Change Signature, and Encapsulate Field now show their current settings as quick toggles.
VA Rename dialog correctly uses dark title bar in Visual Studio's dark theme.
Also in this release:
- A
DisableWelcomePageregistry setting turns off the Welcome Page shown on fresh installs and after a Visual Assist update. - The Welcome Page no longer opens blank when the WebView2 Runtime is missing.
Compatibility, stability, and security improvements
2026.5 also includes fixes that make Visual Assist easier to install and run on older systems and Visual Studio versions.
We’ve fixed Visual Assist failing to load on Windows Server 2016 and Windows 7 SP1, the navigation bar not appearing on Windows 8.1 and earlier, and an intermittent ‘SetSite failed’ error when Visual Studio 2015–2019 starts.
A few stability fixes are included as well. These address issues in the VS 2022 navigation bar and completion list, and in VS 2019 and earlier when the symbol database is under memory pressure.
And one small installer improvement: it no longer continuously re-renders its UI during installation. That fixes the sluggishness it caused in virtual machines.
A few fixes you’ll notice right away
2026.5 also includes a broad set of fixes across navigation, search, editing, refactoring, and the UI.
A few examples:
- Open File in Solution (Shift+Alt+O) no longer ignores search terms after the first one. This restores expected behavior for multi-term searches and exclusion terms such as
-cover. - Find References (Shift+Alt+F) no longer includes files that have been excluded from parsing.
- Goto (Alt+G) no longer jumps to the previous symbol after you move the caret quickly.
Full list of fixes in 2026.5
Navigation and search
- Fixed Visual Assist syntax coloring missing in CUDA files.
- Fixed Open File in Solution ignoring every search term after the first, which also made exclusion terms such as -cover hide every file.
- Fixed Find References including files and extensions that are excluded from parsing.
- Fixed Goto (Alt+G) going to the previous symbol when used right after moving the caret quickly.
- Fixed the caret staying in its old position after clearing the List Methods in File (Alt+M) filter.
- Fixed blank entries in the VA View file and symbol drop-down lists.
- Fixed the Open File in Solution hint about NuGet headers pointing to the old location of the ‘Show only files in the current solution’ option.
Editing and refactoring
- Fixed Create Implementation duplicating the signature when a macro such as UFUNCTION precedes a function with a const return type.
- Fixed typing an opening bracket or quote over a VA Snippet placeholder surrounding it instead of replacing it in Visual Studio 2022 and 2026.
- Fixed files with a designer, such as XAML, opening in the designer instead of the code view when Visual Assist opens them.
UI and settings
- Restored Alt+key shortcuts for the settings in Find Symbol in Solution, Open File in Solution, and GoTo Member, and added quick toggles that show the current settings.
- Fixed the missing search and clear button in the VA Hashtags filter.
- Fixed Options dialog tooltips that were missing, showed only their image, or showed only their first paragraph.
- Fixed Source Links GitHub tooltips showing an Int32 overflow error instead of the issue’s details.
- Fixed the Welcome Page opening as a blank window on systems without the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime.
- Fixed the spelling of VA Hashtags on the Welcome Page.
VA Intelligence
- Fixed the VA Intelligence local model download failing on any dropped connection; it now retries and resumes.
- Fixed the VA Intelligence setup message naming Ctrl+Shift+Q instead of Alt+Shift+Q as the shortcut for the Quick Actions and Refactorings menu.
- Fixed the link to the VA Intelligence FAQ in the Setup VA Intelligence dialog.
Compatibility and stability
- Fixed Visual Assist failing to load on Windows Server 2016.
- Fixed Visual Assist failing to load on Windows 7 SP1.
- Fixed the navigation bar never appearing on Windows 8.1 and earlier.
- Fixed an intermittent ‘SetSite failed’ error for the Visual Assist package when Visual Studio 2015 to 2019 starts.
- Fixed an occasional Visual Studio 2022 crash when the navigation bar rebuilt its drop-down list while the editor was resized.
- Fixed an occasional Visual Studio 2022 crash when Visual Assist handed a completion list back to the IDE.
- Fixed a rare crash in Visual Studio 2019 and earlier when the symbol database was under memory pressure.
- Fixed the installer rendering continuously, which made it sluggish in virtual machines.
Update now to Visual Assist 2026.5
Inspect code across the projects you choose instead of one file at a time, and bring Claude Code, Codex, or the local Gemma 4 model into Visual Studio through VA Agent. Smaller improvements throughout make everyday navigation and refactoring easier too.
Active software maintenance is required to use the features and fixes in this release. If you’re new to Visual Assist, you can try it with a 30-day full-access trial.
If you try VA Agent, we’d especially like to hear what works and what’s missing. You can send feedback through the in-app form or join us on Discord.
Happy coding.
FAQ
Is project-wide code inspection AI-powered?
No. Project-wide code inspection uses rule-based clang-tidy checks and a clang-based parser. The same code and rules produce the same result on each run.
Do I need a Claude or OpenAI subscription to use VA Agent?
Only if you want to use Claude Code or Codex. The local VA Intelligence model does not require one.
Does my code go through Whole Tomato’s servers?
No. Claude Code and Codex use the provider you choose under your own account. The local VA Intelligence model runs on your machine. Nothing passes through Whole Tomato servers.
What happened to Explain Code with AI, and where is Change Code with AI now?
Explain Code with AI was removed in 2026.5. You can use VA Agent in Ask Mode to ask for an explanation instead.
Change Code with AI now runs through VA Agent and lets the selected agent propose changes for you to apply.
Which Visual Studio and Windows versions does VA Agent support?
VA Agent supports Visual Studio 2015 and later on Windows 7 SP1 and later.