Releases

Get the latest version here. After updating, restart Visual Studio; Wheelhouse sets itself up again on that start.

1.33.0

16 September 2026

Claude can see Visual Studio, and the app you are debugging.

  • Claude can take a picture of Visual Studio as you see it, theme and all: the whole IDE, one window, or a dialog Visual Studio is waiting on. It uses this to check how a change to a WPF, WinForms or XAML view actually looks, and to see what you are pointing at.
  • It can also see the app you are debugging, whether it is running or stopped at a breakpoint, and even when Visual Studio is in front of it, including any dialog the app is showing. Only the app being debugged is ever looked at; pictures stay on your computer apart from the answer Claude reads, like the rest of your code.
  • Settings › Versions now shows your Visual Studio version, and a Report an issue button opens the report form with every version already filled in.
  • The Always allow button on a permission prompt shows the tool's name correctly: underscores in it used to disappear.

1.32.0

16 September 2026

Finding your way around a long session.

  • The session list groups by branch: conversations from the branch you are on come first, then the rest, each labelled with the branch it belongs to. As before, the list covers the solution you have open.
  • A Latest button appears over the conversation when you scroll back, and returns you to the newest message.
  • Settings shows the versions you are running: the extension, its MCP server and the bridge between them, with a button to copy them into a bug report.
  • When Claude Code compacts a conversation, its summary is now a single line you can open, instead of pages of text filling the panel.

1.31.1

15 September 2026

The panel stays quick in long sessions.

  • Sending a prompt in a long conversation no longer pauses the panel. Showing and hiding the working indicator used to make the panel lay out the whole conversation again, which in a session of a hundred or so turns took most of a second each time; it now takes a couple of milliseconds.
  • Long sessions use about a third less memory: a tool call's full output is only prepared when you open its row.
  • The Marketplace listing links to this site, its Getting started guide and these release notes.

1.31.0

14 September 2026

A 14-day free trial, then a licence.

  • Wheelhouse is free for 14 days on each computer. After that it needs a licence: a one-off payment per developer, covering two computers and every future version.
  • Enter your key in the panel's settings, under Licence, or on the card the panel shows when the trial ends.
  • Without a licence the panel and the in-process tools stop. Claude Code in a terminal keeps working with the MCP server's slower PowerShell tools.
  • Wheelhouse checks its trial or licence with this site when Visual Studio starts and every few hours, and a licensed computer keeps working for 30 days without a connection. The privacy policy describes what the check sends.

1.30.0

14 September 2026

Groundwork for licences.

  • The panel's settings gain a Licence section. Licensing was not yet switched on in this version, so nothing changed in use. 1.30.1 and 1.30.2 changed only this site.

1.29.0

14 September 2026

Sign in to Claude without leaving Visual Studio.

  • When Claude Code is not signed in, the Wheelhouse panel offers to sign you in, in your browser, and starts the session as soon as you have.
  • If sign-in stops working during a session, the panel asks you to sign in again and then carries on with the same conversation.

1.28.0

13 September 2026

Support site fixes.

  • No changes to the extension itself.
  • Emails from this site (issue links, replies, contact messages) are delivered reliably.

1.27.0

13 September 2026

Ready for the Visual Studio Marketplace.

  • The extension declares Visual Studio 17.14 and later, as the Marketplace requires. It is built and tested for Visual Studio 2026.

1.26.0

13 September 2026

The download is now Wheelhouse.vsix.

  • The extension file is Wheelhouse.vsix and the release zip is wheelhouse-vX.Y.Z.zip. It installs over earlier versions as before.

1.25.0

13 September 2026

Wheelhouse gets its name and icon.

  • The extension, its panel and the View menu item are now called Wheelhouse, and carry a ship's wheel icon.
  • Existing installs keep working: the MCP server's name, vs-claude-mcp, and its install folder are unchanged, so no registration or tool name changes.

1.24.0

13 September 2026

Housekeeping release.

  • The release build is unsigned again, after an experiment with Authenticode signing was withdrawn.

1.23.0

13 September 2026

Installing the extension is the whole install.

  • The extension carries its MCP server and sets it up on first start: installs it, registers it with Claude Code, and writes the usage guidance into CLAUDE.md.
  • A server that is in use is moved aside rather than stopped.
  • Problems during setup are shown in a bar across the top of Visual Studio.

1.22.0

13 September 2026

Find flaky tests.

  • run_test takes repeat, and reports which tests did not do the same thing every time.

1.21.0

13 September 2026

Compare performance between commits.

  • compare_profiles shows what moved between two sets of profiles, and refuses a faster or slower verdict the measurements cannot support.

1.20.0

13 September 2026

CPU profiling.

  • run_profile returns ranked methods with self and total time, by launching a project or attaching to a running process.