Agents
Specialist personas, isolated workers, or coordinated teams with distinct prompts and tools
Extension Name Custom Agents and Subagents
Vendor Terms custom agents, subagents, plan agent, headless mode, review loops, ACP
Scopes
Project / Repo RootUser / Home
Interfaces IDE, CLI
Availability current (explicit)
Trust Model Isolated workers that default to read-only; write tools require explicit opt-in via allowedTools globs
Notes CLI agents are JSON configs with tools, resources, hooks, and knowledge bases; review loops (new) enable self-correcting pipelines with max 10 iterations; ACP protocol enables Kiro as agent in JetBrains/Zed; headless mode for CI/CD; autonomous agent (preview) runs asynchronously in sandboxed environments
Extension Name Subagents
Vendor Terms subagents, custom subagents, managed subagents, Dynamic Workflows
Scopes
User / HomeProject / Repo RootOrganization / EnterpriseCloud / Web Session
Interfaces terminal CLI, VS Code, Desktop, web
Availability current (explicit)
Trust Model Isolated workers with their own context, prompt, and tools; only summary returns to parent
Notes Five priority levels (managed > CLI flag > project > user > plugin); built-in Explore, Plan, and Guide agents; Dynamic Workflows (new) generate JavaScript orchestration to fan work across parallel subagent swarms; isolation via worktrees; forked subagents (experimental)
Extension Name Custom Agents
Vendor Terms custom agents, agent profiles, .agent.md, Autopilot, Fleet
Scopes
User / HomeProject / Repo RootOrganization / Enterprise
Interfaces GitHub.com, VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Eclipse, Xcode, CLI, Copilot SDK
Availability current (explicit)
Trust Model Isolated persona with its own instructions, tool restrictions, and context; enterprise agents override org agents
Notes Repo/org/enterprise scoping with lowest-level override; CLI adds Autopilot (autonomous), Fleet (parallel execution), and Chronicle (session persistence); Copilot SDK provides full programmatic agent loop with OpenTelemetry observability
Extension Name Subagents
Vendor Terms subagents, custom agents, agent threads, spawn_agents_on_csv
Scopes
User / HomeProject / Repo RootCloud / Web Session
Interfaces app, CLI
Availability current (explicit)
Trust Model Isolated workers that inherit parent sandbox policy; approval requests surface from inactive threads
Notes Enabled by default; built-in default/worker/explorer agents; custom agents via TOML files with model and reasoning effort selection; spawn_agents_on_csv (experimental) for batch processing with structured output; max 6 threads