Review and revert agent changes

Use this guide to review agent changes, request revisions, and undo unwanted edits in a folder, worktree, or cloud session.

Choose your review approach

You can review agent changes in diffs. Depending on your harness and window, a working set also lets you keep or undo individual changes, files, or all pending edits. Use the table to find the review controls available for your setup.

To check which harness your session uses, see Identify your current agent harness.

Agents can change files through editing tools, terminal commands, scripts, and MCP tools. Review the resulting files before you commit or integrate them, including changes that might not appear in a tool-specific list.

For keyboard and screen reader access to a diff, use the Accessible Diff Viewer, which presents changes in a unified patch format.

Review pending edits with the working set

When you use Copilot and Local harness sessions in the editor window, supported file edits are tracked as pending review (working set). Keep retains the changes and clears their pending-review state. Undo reverts them without rewinding the agent conversation.

Pending edits are already saved to disk, so running your application or tests uses the changed files. You don't need Git to review them, and Keep doesn't stage or commit them.

To review pending edits:

1. Open a file from the changed-files list in the Chat view.

2. Review the highlighted changes in the editor. Use the Up and Down controls in the editor overlay to navigate between edits.

3. Select Keep or Undo beside an individual change, or use the file-level or all-files review controls to resolve multiple pending edits at once.

Staging changes in the Source Control view automatically keeps the corresponding pending edits.

Configure review controls

• chat.editor.workingSet.enabled Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders Editor working set is experimental and might change or be removed. (Copilot only): Show the working set. Defaults to true.

• chat.editing.revealNextChangeOnResolve Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders : Set to false to stay at the current change after keeping or undoing an edit, instead of navigating to the next pending change.

Review changes by comparing diffs

For Claude or Codex harness sessions in the editor window, the Agents window, and cloud sessions, compare diffs instead of keeping or undoing pending edits.

In the editor window, a pill above the chat input shows the number of affected files and diff statistics. Copilot harness sessions can use this presentation by selecting Show Pill from the working set context menu.

Use any of these review options:

• Select the changed-files pill to open a multi-diff editor with all changes.

• Select a changed file in the agent's response to open its diff.

• In the editor, use the Source Control view to review changed and untracked files when the folder uses Git.

Review changes in the Agents window

1. Open the Changes view in the side panel by using the layout controls in the title bar, or use the ⌥⌘B (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Alt+B) keyboard shortcut.

2. Select a file in the Changes view to open a diff of the agent's edits.

   Other Files groups edits outside the workspace, such as session plans, which aren't committed with workspace changes. Also check Source Control for untracked files and changes made outside tracked edit tools.

   Tip

   Use the Branch Changes dropdown to choose which changeset to review.

3. Select Mark as Reviewed in a file's toolbar to track files you've reviewed in the Branch Changes changeset.

The reviewed state clears if you or the agent changes the file again.

Review cloud changes

Review the session's pull request on GitHub, or check out its branch locally to inspect and revise the changes.

Customize change review in the Agents window

By default, selecting a file in the Changes view opens a multi-file diff editor with all the session changes. To open a focused single-file diff, enable sessions.changes.openSingleFileDiff Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders .

Use the diff toolbar to show the editor beside chat or in a modal window. Select More Actions (...) > Diff View to choose Inline, Side by Side, or Automatic. Automatic switches to inline when the editor is too narrow for side-by-side diffs.

Configure word wrap in diff editors

Control how diff editors in the Changes view wrap long lines with sessions.diffEditor.wordWrap Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders . This setting has the following values:

• inherit (default): Follow the editor.wordWrap Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders setting.
• on: Wrap lines at the editor viewport width.
• off: Never wrap lines.

This setting is independent of word wrap in code editors.

To change it from a diff editor, select More Actions (...) > Word Wrap.

Review changes in the single-pane layout (Experimental)

When you enable the experimental single-pane editor panel, the Changes view and diff editor share one docked pane.

Use Expand All Diffs or Collapse All Diffs to control all files at once. The keybinding toggles the preferred diff view in the Agents window.

The Changes editor restores each file's expanded or collapsed state when you switch sessions or reload the window. The editor tab title shows the next integration action, such as Create Pull Request, and switches to an icon when space is limited.

Provide feedback and request revisions

You can ask the agent to revise its work from any review workflow. Send a follow-up prompt, edit the files directly, or provide inline feedback in the Agents window.

Provide inline feedback to the agent

1. In the Agents window, open a file from the Changes view.

2. Select a range of code in the diff, and enter feedback in the inline comment box.

3. Add feedback to other changes as needed, and then select Submit Feedback to send all comments to the agent.

The agent reads your comments, makes the requested edits, and resolves each comment. Resolved comments disappear from the diff view.

Add pull request review comments

In the Agents window, publish review comments to a session's open GitHub pull request when it uses the Copilot or Claude harness, or the experimental Codex integration.

1. Enable the chat.experimental.agentsWindowPRComments Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders setting.

2. Open a changed file from the Changes view and select a range of code.

3. Select Add Feedback and enter your comment.

4. Select Add PR Comment to publish the review comment. If the session is associated with multiple pull requests, the action identifies the target as owner/repository#number.

The selected range must contain only lines that are part of the pull request diff. If the range isn't eligible, VS Code reports that a pull request comment can't be added to the line.

Add PR Comment publishes the comment to GitHub and doesn't send it to the agent. To request a code change, add the comment as feedback and select Submit Feedback.

Get a second opinion with Rubber Duck

In a Copilot harness session, Rubber Duck uses a complementary model to review plans, code, and tests for substantive issues. It is read-only and doesn't edit files or run commands that change your environment.

The harness might consult Rubber Duck automatically during non-trivial work. To request a review yourself, ask:

Get a second opinion on the changes made so far.

You can also enter /rubber-duck <question>, such as /rubber-duck What edge cases are missing?. The harness summarizes the critique and decides how to act on it.

Learn more about the Rubber Duck agent.

Undo changes at the right scope

Choose a recovery action based on how much work you want to undo:

For help choosing an action, see Get an agent back on track.

Edit a previous chat request

In sessions that support request editing, you can edit a previous request in your conversation history. VS Code reverts file changes made by that request and subsequent requests, and then sends the updated request to the language model.

Before you resend the request, review the affected changes so you understand which work will be removed. Select the request in the conversation, modify it, and resend it. Configure or turn off request editing with chat.editRequests Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders .

Restore a checkpoint

Checkpoints are enabled by default for supported chat sessions. Before processing each request, VS Code creates a snapshot of affected workspace files. Set chat.checkpoints.enabled Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders to control checkpoints.

To restore your workspace to an earlier checkpoint:

1. Navigate to a previous request in the conversation.

2. Hover over the request and select Restore Checkpoint.

   

3. Confirm that you want to restore the checkpoint.

VS Code removes subsequent requests from the conversation history and restores the workspace files to their state at the checkpoint.

Require approval before sensitive edits

Sensitive-file approval happens before the agent saves an edit, rather than during review. Use chat.tools.edits.autoApprove Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders with glob patterns to require a diff and approval for edits to sensitive files.

This example automatically approves edits except to JSON files in the .vscode folder and files named .env:

"chat.tools.edits.autoApprove": {
  "**/*": true,
  "**/.vscode/*.json": false,
  "**/.env": false
}

Local harness-specific behavior

Local harness sessions and existing extension-host sessions use the shared review process. In these sessions, discarding changes in Source Control also discards their pending edits.

Auto-accept edits

For Local harness sessions, use chat.editing.autoAcceptDelay Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders to automatically keep pending edits after a configurable delay. Hover over the editor overlay controls to stop the countdown.

Related resources

• Delegate two tasks without mixing their changes
• Agent sessions
• Security considerations for using AI in VS Code