Create and Configure Agents
Create an agent when a recurring type of work needs its own instructions, model, or permission boundaries.
Create an agent
- Open Settings → Agents and stay on the Agents tab.
- Select the create action.
- Enter a Name: lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens, for example
reviewer. - Write a short Description that helps people choose the agent.
- Write the System Prompt: the expected result, important constraints, and how the work should be verified.
- Select Create.
Give each agent one clear responsibility. The list also shows the agents loaded from your organization and from global and project configuration. Use Import to add an agent definition from a file, and Export agent definition to share one.
Adjust an agent
Open an agent to change its description and prompt, and to set overrides only when it needs behavior different from the session defaults:
| Setting | Effect |
|---|---|
| Model Override and Variant Override | Use a specific model and reasoning effort for this agent. |
| Temperature and Top P | Adjust the model's sampling, when the model supports it. |
| Max Steps | Limit how many steps the agent can take in one turn. |
| Hidden | Keep the agent out of the selector. |
| Disabled | Turn the agent off without deleting it. |
Calculated Permissions shows the permissions the agent ends up with after combining its own rules with your settings.
Built-in agents cannot be redefined, but you can configure the same overrides and a custom prompt for them.
Primary agents and subagents
An agent can be offered for interactive selection (primary), only for delegated work (subagent), or for both. Set this with the mode field (primary, subagent, or all) in the agent's configuration file. Subagent-only agents do not appear in the Chat agent selector.
Requirements
An agent can declare the skills, MCP servers, or VS Code extensions it needs. Before the agent runs, Reasoning checks them. When something is missing, it lists the prerequisites and offers Open Marketplace; install or connect what is missing, then try again.
Save and verify
Select Done to close the editor and save with the Settings save bar. Type /reload in Chat if you edited files outside Settings. Then open the Chat agent selector and confirm that the agent appears with the expected description.
Older configuration may still use the term mode. The current term is agent.