Xcode 27 Agent is impossible to work with.

Question

Created 22h

Replies 5

Boosts 1

Participants 4

Working with Agents in Xcode 27 is a nightmare right now. Every conversation opens in a new window, so you don't see the code you and the agent are working on. You have to go back and forward between the code file and the conversation tab to get the names of data types or functions you need to ask the agent to work on, or to see exactly what you need to ask or how to explain it to the agent.

We need the conversation and the code to be side by side to be able to work on the code and provide the right instructions, as we do in Xcode 26. The current interface just completely ruins any reasonable workflow, unless you are vibe coding, which I don't recommend.

Let me know if there is a way to open the conversation on one side and code files on the other, or PLEASE change it back of what it was before or I will have to keep working on Xcode 26 and miss all the new features.

Thanks

Answered by Random_Meow in 893035022

Hi there @macrojd!

There is a way to open Coding Assistant side-by-side with your code.

Create a new conversation if needed
Click on the file you want to work on
Go to the Coding Assistant tab
Right click on the conversation you want to open
Click Open in Editor Pane

https://youtu.be/AjinXjkeDDI

Answer 1

macrojd OP

22h

I found a way to do it by adding a new panel and disabling artifacts in the conversation tab, but it is a fragile layout that you can change by accident at any time. Not good, but at least I can work.

Answer 2

Random_Meow OP

21h

Accepted Answer

Hi there @macrojd!

There is a way to open Coding Assistant side-by-side with your code.

Create a new conversation if needed
Click on the file you want to work on
Go to the Coding Assistant tab
Right click on the conversation you want to open
Click Open in Editor Pane

https://youtu.be/AjinXjkeDDI

Answer 3

1Okami OP

17h

Following up on the subject of Xcode 27 and conversations: I'm trying to use Playgrounds to do prototyping with agent assistance, which appears to require Codex integration. Is Codex integration a firm requirement, and even if so, is it a temporary limitation? I would potentially prefer using Claude or Gemini. Will that be possible in the near future?

Answer 4

1Okami OP

15h

(Trying to reply here as I kept getting errors trying to respond directly to the previous comment)

Ahh, I see. If I open the Coding Assistant tab and start a new conversation from there, I indeed get a list of agents to select from. I was initially clicking the 'New Conversation' button in the top toolbar, which evidently just implicitly set Codex as the agent without giving me a choice. Now having started a conversation from the Coding Assistant tab using an agent I've configured (Gemini), the button in the toolbar is now defaulting to Gemini. Perhaps a bit of feedback for Apple is that it feels like a less than ideal UX. The intuition of the UI with the button in the center of the toolbar lured me into a trap as it never gave me a choice of agent, nor did any messaging give me the impression there was an alternative available.

Answer 5

Steve12345 OP

9h

Please bring back the previous arrangement, at least as an option. Screen space in XCode is a valuable commodity and having to open three panes rather than the previous two is not a win. The new default behaviour of having the conversation obscure your code makes no sense.