What's New With GitHub Copilot Coding Agent (Feb 26): Thinking Panel for Extended-Reasoning Models, Custom Sub-Agents GA, Auto Model Selection GA

The GitHub Blog·medium signal

GitHub's February 26 comprehensive coding agent update blog detailed three capabilities now GA: a dedicated thinking panel providing visibility into Anthropic extended-reasoning budget consumption during agent execution; custom agents and sub-agents in JetBrains IDEs enabling specialized agent delegation within the IDE; and auto model selection that dynamically chooses the best available model based on real-time performance without manual switching. The thinking panel in particular surfaces reasoning traces that were previously invisible, giving developers actionable signal about why an agent chose a particular implementation path — directly addressing the 'black box' criticism of autonomous coding agents.