Options

All settings live under Tools → Options → cv4vs Agents, split into five pages: General, Chat, Debug, Prompts and Profiles.

Visual Studio persists them in its own settings store; profiles, per-solution state and caches go to %LOCALAPPDATA%; see Settings and data.

General

Setting	Type	Default	Description
Restore panes on solution open	bool	false	Reopen the panes (with their sessions) that were open for a solution when it is reopened.
Offer to ask when the debugger pauses	Never / Exceptions / ExceptionsAndBreakpoints	Exceptions	Show an InfoBar over the file the debugger stopped in, with an “Ask cv4vs Agents” link that asks a chat pane about the break. See Asking about a break.
Default new session	Chat / Cli	Chat	Which kind of pane the “New” button creates, and which kind a profile under View → cv4vs Agents opens. The dropdown beside “New” still lets you pick the other.
Prevent the machine from sleeping while a session is running	bool	true	Keep Windows awake while a chat pane is working, so a turn is not suspended half-way through and left hung. The display still sleeps on its own timer, and an idle pane holds nothing. A CLI pane never holds: a terminal has no notion of a turn. See Keeping the machine awake.
Claude executable path	file path	(empty)	Override auto-detection with a specific claude.exe (browse with …). Empty = auto-detect via PATH / native installer / npm. Must be the real .exe: .cmd/.bat/.ps1 shims can’t be launched. A path that does not exist, or is not an .exe, is not an error: auto-detection takes over and a warning goes to the log. See Troubleshooting.
Show plan usage in the status bar	bool	true	The Claude plan’s session (5h) and weekly (7d) usage in Visual Studio’s status bar, for the profile of the pane you last used; click it for every limit and when each resets. Shown only while a pane is open: with none there is nothing being spent. See Usage → Status bar.
Status bar usage refresh (minutes)	int	15	How often the status bar refreshes plan usage while the profile it shows has no chat pane open (a CLI pane only), by starting a short-lived claude.exe, only while Visual Studio is in front. 0 = never in the background: open chat panes, and opening the status bar popup, still refresh it.

Asking about a break

When the debugger stops, an InfoBar appears over the file it stopped in, with an Ask cv4vs Agents link that asks a chat pane about the break. Exceptions raise it by default, the other pauses that are not a step are opt-in, steps never do. The whole story is in Debug with the agent.

Chat

The page groups its settings in categories, in alphabetical order; the tables below follow them.

Display

Setting	Type	Default	Description
Show cost and duration	bool	false	Show cost (USD) and duration after each response.
Show relative paths in tool rows	bool	true	File paths relative to the working directory (full path if outside it).
Select lines when opening file	bool	true	When opening a file from a tool row, select the relevant lines in the editor.
Preview lines	int	3	Lines shown in preview areas (tool output, user messages) before a body is clipped. 0 shows an open row whole, however long it is.
Collapse tool results	bool	false	Start every tool row closed, so a long session reads as what Claude did rather than how it got there. The chevron opens one when you want it; a failed row still shows its dot and the button that opens the full output.
View mode	Full / Focus / HideToolCalls	Full	How much of Claude’s work the chat shows. Full: every row. Focus: each run of tool calls and thinking between two replies folds into one row (5 tool calls · 1 failed, or Running Bash… while it works) that opens in place. HideToolCalls: the tool rows are removed. In every mode your answers to questions, plan decisions, the task list and a call waiting for your approval stay. The View mode entry in the chat’s / menu switches it for every open chat, keeping each row as it was: open or closed, older history kept. Changed here instead, it reloads each idle chat like any other setting on this page.
Chat font size	int (px)	13	Font size of the chat message text.
Show WebView developer entries	bool	false	Add “WebView DevTools” and “WebView task manager” to the chat toolbar’s “More” (…) menu: the browser console/DOM/network on the chat itself, and the browser’s processes with their memory and CPU. Pre-release builds always offer both.
Sticky user messages	bool	true	Pin the current exchange’s user message at the top while the reply/tool rows scroll below.

File links

Setting	Type	Default	Description
Extra linkable extensions	string[]	(empty)	Extensions to also linkify when Claude names a file in prose (render.wgsl:20), on top of the ~270 built-in ones, needed only for a language not shipped yet. A markdown link written by the model is always linked, whatever its extension. One per line, without the dot. See Clickable file references.

Files

Setting	Type	Default	Description
Autosave before Claude reads/writes	bool	true	Save a dirty file before Claude reads/writes it, so it sees your in-editor edits, not the stale on-disk version.
Keep file checkpoints (Rewind)	bool	true	Let Claude copy a file before editing it, so /rewind can restore it. Only files Claude edits are covered: what it changes by running a command is not. Copies live under ~/.claude/file-history and are never cleaned up, the reason to turn this off if you do not use Rewind. Read when a chat starts, so it applies to the next one you open.
Send post-edit diagnostics to Claude (experimental)	bool	false	Feed back the new errors/warnings an edit introduced. Experimental: unreliable because VS only analyses files open in an editor (see Editor context).
Allowed upload file extensions	string[]	100 defaults	Extensions accepted on upload/drop. Images (.png, .jpg, .gif, .webp) are sent as images, .pdf as a document, the rest as text. Video files are listed so they can be attached, but Claude cannot watch them and only sees the file name. Anything not listed is rejected with a notice. One entry per line, with or without the leading dot.

Ignore

Setting	Type	Default	Description
Respect .gitignore	bool	true	Also hide from the @ picker what the workspace’s .gitignore files (at every level inside it, none above it) and git’s global excludes (core.excludesFile) match, inside a git repository or not. Off: only the Ignored patterns below apply.
Ignored patterns	file path	shipped defaults	Extra rules hiding files from the @ picker, written as a .gitignore and kept as one: the row shows where the file is and … opens it in the editor. Applied only where the workspace’s own ignore rules say nothing, so they are the fallback for a project that ships none. The picker lists the whole workspace, with no limit on the number of files: the list is read when the @ menu opens and filtered as you type.

Input

Setting	Type	Default	Description
Send the selected text with the message	bool	false	Attach the selected code itself, not just its file and line numbers. Off, the message names the lines and Claude opens the file to read them: the same content, but only if it needs it, and only once. On, the code travels with every message sent with a selection. Turn it on when you ask about code you have not saved: off, Claude reads the file from disk and sees the saved version. The composer’s context chip shows which of the two is going out (🔖 position / 🧾 position + code). See Spending less context.
Use Ctrl+Enter to send	bool	false	On: Ctrl+Enter sends, Enter = newline. Off: Enter sends, Shift+Enter = newline.
Spell check in the composer	bool	false	Underline misspelled words while you type. Off by default: code names, paths, @ mentions and / commands are what the composer mostly holds, and the spell checker flags all of them. The underline marks the word; correcting it is up to you.
Initial permission mode	Default / Manual / AcceptEdits / Plan / BypassPermissions	Default	Mode every new chat starts in (changeable per-session from the toolbar). Default leaves it to Claude Code: the permissions.defaultMode of your settings.json (user or folder), or the mode it picks by itself when there is none (which may be Auto), as in a terminal. Manual always asks before edits, whatever settings.json says. BypassPermissions also requires Allow dangerously skip permissions below: without it, sessions start in Manual.
Allow dangerously skip permissions	bool	false	Adds “Bypass permissions” to the toolbar’s permission menu: a mode that never asks, even for commands that can destroy data. Enabling it skips nothing by itself: the mode still has to be selected. Takes effect on new sessions.

Misc

The one setting with no category of its own; the page lists it last, under Misc.

Setting	Type	Default	Description
Show tool errors inline	bool	false	Show the tool error inline below the diff/output; off = alert icon only (click to open in VS).

Debug

Setting	Type	Default	Description
Log level	None / Error / Warn / Info / Debug / Trace	None	Output-window verbosity. None = silent; Trace = include bridge traffic. Lines are prefixed with the originating pane ([chat#2], [cli#1]) so several open panes can be told apart in the single Output pane.
Enable performance logging	bool	false	Performance-span logging in the Output window (C#) and browser console (JS). Requires a VS restart.

Profiles

Not a settings table but an editor: each profile is a named set of environment variables (e.g. ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN, model overrides) injected into that pane’s claude.exe, so a pane can run on a different provider while the IDE MCP tools keep working.

Profiles are not stored in the VS settings store: they live in profiles.json. Creating one, Paste from JSON and the provider setup guides are in Another provider.

Prompts

Not a settings table but an editor: the entries offered under cv4vs Agents when you right-click code, the Error List or the Output window: one tab per menu. Picking one writes it into a chat pane’s composer, or sends it when Send on click is set.

Like profiles, these live in a file, prompts.json. The columns, what each menu hands the prompt and the fixed Add to chat entries are in Ask from the editor.