Here on the Gemini Code Assist team, our primary goal is to make the moment-to-moment experience of writing and reviewing code more fluid, intelligent, and productive. We believe that a great developer tool gets out of your way while offering powerful assistance right when and where you need it.
This post highlights recent feature additions and improvements that enhance your core coding workflow. From writing the first line of a function to navigating your project, these updates are designed to keep you in a state of flow and help you produce high-quality code faster.
- Agent Mode with Auto Approve acts as an intelligent collaborator that understands your entire codebase, drastically simplifying large-scale changes like adding a new API endpoint across multiple files. The agent analyzes your request, proposes a multi-step plan for your approval and then executes it. To even further improve your efficiency on routine tasks, you can enable Auto Approve Mode, which lets the agent act on its plan without manual checks at each step. This transforms tedious, multi-file updates that once took hours into a single, automated command, powerfully freeing you up to focus on more complex architectural challenges.
- Improved Code Completion Speed We’ve made significant under-the-hood improvements to our models and infrastructure to boost code completion speed. This isn’t just about raw speed; it’s about maintaining your cognitive flow and reducing frustrating interruptions. By suggesting the relevant code you need quickly, it allows you to complete blocks of code, implement entire functions, and import libraries without disruptive pauses. This quick feedback loop enables you to code closer to the speed of thought, keeping you focused on the problem and not the tool.
Each of the features we’ve covered was designed with one goal in mind: to make your hands-on-keyboard coding experience as seamless and powerful as possible. By removing friction from your daily tasks and further enhancing Code Assist’s AI-assistive capability, we hope to keep you in that creative flow state where great development happens.
Now, let’s zoom out. A truly powerful developer experience is one you can control and tailor to your specific needs. The following features focus on the new tools and settings that allow you to customize your interactions with Gemini, manage your development context with precision, and stay informed about the tool itself.
- Manage Files and Folders in the Context Drawer Gain precise, temporary control over what Gemini sees with the new Context Drawer. This UI allows you to easily view, add, or remove specific files and folders from the context for your current conversation. For example, if you’re working on a bug that only involves three files in a massive project, you can limit the context to just those files. This ensures that the AI provides highly relevant answers without being confused or cluttered by unrelated parts of your codebase, leading to faster and more accurate assistance.
- Release Channel Name in Chat Banner Stay informed about the tool you’re running with the release channel name now displayed in the VS Code chat banner. This small but important detail helps you know whether you’re on the Stable or Release Candidate channel. This transparency makes it easier to track when new features will become available to you, understand potential behavior changes between versions, and provide more accurate feedback to our team, which is crucial for bug reports and feature requests.
We’ve explored the evolution of your AI collaborator—from an assistant that speeds up your core coding tasks to a fully customizable partner that adapts to your unique workflow. Our mission is to build Gemini Code Assist that not only understands code but understands how you code. By refining the immediate, in-editor experience and providing deep customization, we aim to make your development process more intuitive, creative, and powerful.
We’re incredibly excited to get these tools into your hands. Please dive in, experiment with the new features, and continue to share your feedback. The future of software development is collaborative, and we can’t wait to see what you build with Gemini Code Assist.