Infineon Technologies AG is enhancing its ModusToolbox software ecosystem with a new AI Assistant extension for Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code). The tool provides AI coding agents with hardware-specific information for PSOC Edge and PSOC Control microcontrollers, helping developers create code that works reliably on actual hardware.
General-purpose AI coding tools may generate code that looks correct but contains hardware compatibility issues, uses outdated APIs, targets the wrong device, or misses essential initialization steps. The ModusToolbox AI Assistant addresses these challenges by tailoring code suggestions to the selected microcontroller, development board, and peripheral configuration. This helps improve the accuracy and reliability of embedded software development. Project context is analyzed locally, ensuring customer project data remains on the developer’s system. The extension is particularly useful for building connected IoT devices that combine graphics, connectivity, and other advanced features.
Embedded development requires precise hardware configuration. A wrong pin assignment or a missed clock configuration can cost development teams hours of debugging on physical hardware. General-purpose AI assistants typically lack the device-specific context to identify such issues in advance. The ModusToolbox AI Assistant provides this context through a local analysis of the workspace. It evaluates the project structure, board support package, installed middleware, code examples and available tools. Based on this analysis, the extension supplies the AI agent with device-specific instructions and development skills. These cover peripherals such as GPIO, I2C, SPI, UART and DMA as well as connectivity and RTOS functions. The targeted context enables the AI agent to generate more accurate code and reduces token consumption.
“AI-assisted workflows are changing how developers build embedded systems,” says Sam Geha, Executive Vice President of IoT – Compute & Wireless Business at Infineon. “With the ModusToolbox AI Assistant, developers can combine the productivity of generative AI with the device-specific knowledge needed to build for our microcontrollers and wireless products. Because project context is processed locally, customers retain control of their development data while accelerating the path from concept to deployment.”
Before generating code, the assistant creates a project plan that developers can review and refine. The plan defines target device, board, libraries and project structure. The same workflow supports the migration of existing projects to other Infineon devices. ModusToolbox tools such as Device Configurator and Library Manager can be launched directly from the AI chat. The extension is compatible with GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Windsurf. Local processing supports deployment in environments with restrictive IT security policies.
Availability
The ModusToolbox AI Assistant is available as a VS Code extension pack. It requires VS Code 1.85 and ModusToolbox 3.7 or later. In addition to PSOC Edge and PSOC Control, upcoming releases of the extension will add support for PSOC 4, PSOC 6 and TRAVEO T2G families. The ModusToolbox AI Assistant can be downloaded on the Visual Studio Code Marketplace.
