Kilo Code’s multi‑agent VS Code extension

Most coding assistants still work like a single contractor in one room. If you want one model to write code, another to test it, and a third to review it, you usually end up juggling tabs, branches, and copy-paste. (kilo.ai) A git worktree is Git’s way of giving one repository more than one working folder at the same time. It is like making extra desks for the same project, so different changes can happen in parallel without everyone bumping into the same files. (deepwiki.com) That matters for artificial intelligence coding agents because agents are messy roommates when they share one workspace. If two agents edit the same checkout, one can overwrite files, change terminal state, or leave half-finished edits that confuse the next step. (deepwiki.com) The clean version is isolation. One agent gets one worktree, runs its own commands, edits its own copy of the repository, and comes back with a result that can be reviewed before anything touches the main branch. (kilo.ai) Model comparison is a separate problem. Developers now have access to hundreds of models, but most tools still ask you to pick one model first and only find out later whether another model would have written cleaner code, better tests, or a safer refactor. (marketplace.visualstudio.com) Open-source tooling changes the tradeoff again. When the core is public, teams can inspect how agent workflows are wired together, modify the extension locally, and contribute changes instead of waiting for a closed product roadmap. (github.com) That is the setup behind Kilo Code’s latest Visual Studio Code update. Kilo says its rebuilt extension now runs on the same portable core as Kilo Command Line Interface, which brings subagent delegation, parallel execution, and shared sessions into the editor. (kilo.ai) Inside the new version, Agent Manager is no longer a separate add-on layer. Kilo says worktrees, parallel sessions, and inline review are now native features because the Visual Studio Code extension and the command-line tool share the same foundation. (kilo.ai) Kilo also says each agent can get its own git worktree in a subdirectory, or several agents can stay on the same worktree for read-heavy collaboration. Results can come back through a pull request, a commit, or a direct apply flow, depending on how formal the team wants the handoff to be. (kilo.ai) The other new piece is side-by-side model comparison on the same prompt. Kilo says a developer can run Claude, GPT, Gemini, or another model against identical instructions and compare the actual code output instead of relying on benchmark charts. (kilo.ai) Kilo is pushing this from a familiar place rather than a new standalone tool. Its extension listing on the Visual Studio Marketplace says Kilo Code is free, open source, and supports more than 500 models, while the marketplace page shows about 918,019 installs as of April 8, 2026. (marketplace.visualstudio.com) The company is also signaling scale around the open-source project itself. Kilo’s GitHub repository showed about 17.8 thousand stars, roughly 2.3 thousand forks, and more than 15,000 commits when checked on April 8, 2026. (github.com) What Kilo is really selling here is less context switching. Instead of leaving Visual Studio Code to spin up branches, compare models, and review separate agent runs, the extension tries to turn the editor into a control room for several agents working on the same codebase at once. (kilo.ai)