Goodbye to the Editor Ping-Pong: ReSharper Brings Real .NET Debugging to Your AI Editor
If you’re a .NET developer who switched to an AI-first editor like Cursor, you probably have a second IDE open just for debugging. That was the silent trade-off of migrating to Cursor, Antigravity, Devin Desktop, or Kiro: better AI-assisted coding, but no first-party way to step through your code when something breaks.
The reason is licensing, not negligence. Microsoft’s C# Dev Kit — the extension most people use for debugging in VS Code — is licensed only for genuine VS Code. It doesn’t run on Cursor or other VS Code-compatible editors. So .NET devs in those editors were stuck bouncing between their AI editor and a separate IDE just to attach a debugger.
JetBrains just closed that gap. With the ReSharper 2026.2 release, the company launched the first version of a .NET debugger built on the same engine that powers JetBrains Rider — and it’s designed specifically to work in VS Code-compatible environments, including Cursor, Google Antigravity IDE, Devin Desktop, and Kiro.
What You Actually Get
This isn’t a stripped-down debugger. The initial release includes:
- Breakpoint management — conditional breakpoints, hit counts, dependent breakpoints, and logpoints, all configurable directly in the editor’s gutter
- Real-time inspection — variable values, watch expressions, and call stacks through VS Code’s standard Debug View
- Full step navigation — Step Over, Step Into, Step Out, aligned with VS Code’s debug adapter protocol
- Launch-and-attach — start new debugging sessions or attach to running processes for .NET, .NET Framework, and Mono
- Unit test debugging — set breakpoints inside your tests and run them under the debugger directly from the editor
It also automatically reads your existing launchSettings.json and can reuse launch.json files you already have from other debugging setups — including those from C# Dev Kit or NetCoreDbg. No need to rebuild your configs from scratch.
Something You Need to Know Before Installing
VS Code only allows one extension to act as the debug engine per language. If you already have Microsoft’s C# Dev Kit (or another C# debugging extension) installed alongside ReSharper, ReSharper’s debugger won’t be able to take control. You’ll need to disable or uninstall the competing extension and reload your editor before it works.
Getting Started
The extension installs like any other:
- VS Code: search for
JetBrains.resharper-codein the Marketplace - Cursor, Antigravity, Devin Desktop, Kiro: install it from the Open VSX Registry
There’s no separate debugger to configure — once ReSharper is installed and no other C# debug extension is competing for the slot, it just works.
A straight warning from JetBrains: legacy .NET Framework launches (WPF apps, for example) may fail on the first try. The workaround is to run the app first and then attach the debugger to the already-running process, rather than launching it through the debugger.
This is a first release, and JetBrains said they’re actively taking feedback on what to build next. But for devs who’ve been keeping a second IDE open just for this, it’s already enough to close that loop.