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dewtell
Senior Member
25 Posts |
 Posted - Apr 21 2026 : 2:34:34 PM
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I've installed the latest 2026.3 build, and downloaded and installed the VA Intelligence support. But I can't seem to invoke the Change Code feature noted in the release announcement. I highlight a section of code, and am then able to pull down the menu from the tomato icon, but Change Code isn't one of the listed items. I am able to get it to explain a variable using AI, so I know the AI stuff is apparently working, but the general feature of changing the highlighted code in response to a prompt and getting the side-by-side diff doesn't seem to be something I can invoke. What am I missing?
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
19376 Posts |
Posted - Apr 22 2026 : 07:11:10 AM
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Starting with something incredibly simple, I selected the following line of code:
int nSimpleInitialize = 34; // #Initialize
using Shift and Down arrow, to make sure the end of line character was also selected. Then I use Alt-Shift-Q to open the context menu, and the first option in the menu was "Change Code with AI (beta)..." which produced a "what do you want to do" box.
This was done using VS2022 and VA 2610.0 (VA 2026.3). What results do you get if you try the same steps? |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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dewtell
Senior Member
25 Posts |
Posted - Apr 22 2026 : 2:19:37 PM
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When I do Alt-Shift-Q to open the context menu (note: Instructions when I installed AI were to use Ctrl-Shift-Q, you might want to fix that), I get a pop-up menu with three entries:
Sort Methods by Header File (beta)
Extract Method ...
Move Selection to New File ...
No entry for Change Code.
This is with VS2013 and VA 2026.3.
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
19376 Posts |
Posted - Apr 23 2026 : 07:56:35 AM
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I hadn't noticed that, but you are quite right, the keyboard shortcut in the dialog is indeed wrong:
case=166177 |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
19376 Posts |
Posted - Apr 23 2026 : 11:30:22 AM
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Checking various versions of Visual Studio took a few moments, but yes, change code with AI just isn't being offered in VS2013, but explain with AI is being offered. The earliest version of Visual Studio I am seeing change with AI being offered is VS2015.
To be fair, VS2013 is very old now! But having said that, it would be nice to know where this is supposed to work.
case=166179 |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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dewtell
Senior Member
25 Posts |
Posted - May 04 2026 : 8:00:28 PM
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| VS2013 is old, but we have multiple build artifacts that have a dependency on it, and haven't had the staff time available to upgrade them all over the past several years. For what it's worth, Claude Code does seem to be able to accept it as a target version. |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
19376 Posts |
Posted - May 05 2026 : 05:50:54 AM
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Different versions of Visual Studio need different handling, and obviously most of our focus is on the newer versions of Visual Studio. But we still do support VS2013, but supporting, and adding new features to are slightly different statements.
I don't use Claude Code personally, so is this an actual Visual Studio extension? Or are you just pointing a tool at your source code? I am somewhat curious now. My reading on the subject suggested that most AI tools read the source code "directly", not via an extension inside Visual Studio. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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dewtell
Senior Member
25 Posts |
Posted - May 06 2026 : 4:51:53 PM
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No, it's not integrated with Visual Studio, but it understands what Visual Studio 2013 means when we ask it to make new code compatible with it. I've been having conversations with it in the Claude App, and it asks me to upload specific files that it needs for a task, and then outputs its changes in a parallel directory system for new files, while providing diffs for changes to existing files that I then have to merge in. It seems to be working pretty well for a current project that involves extensive GUI changes. We haven't had a full-time GUI guy since our last guy left in 2019, and while we got him to give us a quick tutorial before he left so we could make minor changes, this is a much more extensive project than I would be comfortable with on my own. I still need to double-check its work, though.
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
19376 Posts |
Posted - May 07 2026 : 07:10:49 AM
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VS2013 compatibility is going to mean using the right versions of the libraries, and only using C++ language features that are supported by VS2013. There is a bit of a jump in language support between VS2012 and VS2013, which is something I have discovered when setting up test cases that I run in multiple different versions of Visual Studio.
From a product point of view, just reading the source code outside of the IDE is going to be quite a bit easier than working "inside" the IDE, since you need to read the source code in both situations, but doing all this inside the IDE, as an extension, adds a noticeable amount of complexity and overhead, especially when VS2013 has long since stopped being supported by Microsoft.
So this is one of those situations where what Claude is doing with VS2013 support isn't directly comparable to what VA has to do. Not that this takes anything away from what Claude is doing with correctly understanding your code, and also the library and language version details at work here. That does speak to a lot of VS2013 specific training data having been fed into it. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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Cant seem to get to new Change Code feature
