Abhishek SinghForge Pilot
An AI coding assistant that lives inside Visual Studio — it reads your project, answers questions about it, and makes changes you review before they land.
A pair programmer docked next to your code
Visual Studio is where a lot of professional software gets written. Forge Pilot adds a panel to it that you can talk to in plain English — "why is this page slow?", "add validation to this form", "explain what this class does".
Unlike a chat window in a browser, it can actually see the project you have open. It reads the relevant files itself, so you don't have to copy and paste code back and forth to give it context.
And it doesn't change anything behind your back. Every edit is shown as a before-and-after diff you approve or reject, and it asks permission before running anything on your machine.
- ✓
It's free. No licence fee, no per-seat cost.
- ✓
It's open source. MIT licensed — read it, fork it, ship it.
- ✓
Your code stays yours. It runs against your own AI subscription rather than a service I operate.
- ✓
Nothing to configure. Install it and it opens itself, docked beside Solution Explorer.
What it does
The design goal was simple: keep everything you'd normally lose by switching to a browser tab.
Conversation, not commands
Ask questions about the code in the same window you're writing it in — no tab switching, no pasting snippets to give it context.
Reviewable diffs
Every proposed edit appears as a colour-coded before-and-after with line numbers. Nothing is written until you've read it.
Permission prompts
It asks before touching files or running commands. Five modes, from approve-everything-individually to fully autonomous — you pick how much rope it gets.
Visible task lists
On a multi-step job it keeps a running checklist, so you can see what it has finished and what it's still working through.
Controls where you need them
Model, thinking effort and permission mode sit as chips under the text box — not buried in a settings dialog four menus deep.
Usage you can see
Your remaining quota renders as meters that turn amber then red as you approach the limit, alongside the conversation's current size.
What you'll need
- 1
Visual Studio 2026 (17.14 or newer) on Windows — Community, Professional or Enterprise.
- 2
Node.js version 18 or later, used to install the assistant's command-line engine.
- 3
A Claude Pro or Max subscription. Forge Pilot itself is free, but the AI behind it runs on your own subscription.
# install the engine Forge Pilot drives npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code # sign in with your Claude subscription claude login
Then install the extension from the Marketplace and open it from View → Other Windows → Forge Pilot.
Standing on someone else's work
Forge Pilot is a fork of VsAgentic
The foundation — the command-line integration, session persistence, and the permission system that brokers what the assistant is allowed to do — is the work of Adolfo Marinucci, in VsAgentic, used under the MIT licence.
My fork rebuilds the interface, adds the session controls and the slash-command picker, and gives the extension its own identity so it installs alongside the original rather than replacing it. If you'd rather have the upstream version, install VsAgentic instead.
Forge Pilot is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic or Microsoft.
Try it out
Free, open source, and it installs beside whatever you already use.