Welcome to the February recap of what’s new on stackoverflow.com. This month, we’ve launched several improvements to AI Assist, opened Chat to all users on Stack Overflow, launched custom badges across the network, and launched one of the first community-authored coding challenges. We’re also taking the opportunity to spotlight a community member in this month’s recap. Come check it out!
AI Assist
Since AI Assist became available on Stack Overflow in December 2025, we’ve added several updates and improvements to the AI-powered, conversational search and discovery tool. Some notable updates:
- Responses load much faster with optimized search and re-ranker services.
- Users can share conversations and re-share any updates with a new URL.
- When submitting code as part of a question, AI Assist now displays it in markdown format for better readability where possible.
- Added a link to the Stack Overflow MCP server documentation
Learn more about all the upgrades we’ve shipped, or give it a try. AI Assist is available to all users and can help you find reusable code, interpret error messages, resolve merge conflicts, and more!
Opening chat to all registered users
New in 2026, we are thrilled to open all public chat rooms on Stack Overflow to registered users. Previously, participating in public chat rooms required 20 reputation points. As the platform integrates more features for community conversations alongside the traditional knowledge repository, chat offers an easy way to engage with the community and learn more about how to use Stack Overflow from day one.
Users can now chat in a myriad of technical chat rooms ranging from coding languages like Python, C#, and JavaScript or dig in deeper into all things Stack Overflow in The Meta Room. Check out what the community is talking about and get chatting!
Community custom badges
As part of the latest Community Ask Sprint, the community can now request custom badges for Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange sites. Communities can use these badges to recognize members who go above and beyond in various ways and reward users for actions and contributions that align with a site's activities and culture.
Do you have an interesting idea for a new Community Badge? Check your favorite site’s Meta and propose it as a new question! We can’t wait to see the unique recognition awarded to each community.
Our latest coding challenge
Thanks to M– (learn more about them below!), we have our latest community-authored challenge you can participate in.
Picture this: you’ve intercepted pieces of a dictionary from an unknown civilization, but you don’t know what order their letters go in.
The task: figure out the alphabetical order of all the symbols used in this language.
Start solving the puzzle now, chat with other users about their strategy and approach to this challenge, or head to the challenges Sandbox to put forward your own idea for a future challenge!
Community member spotlight
Meet M--!
M-- has been using Stack Overflow for almost a decade, with a few dozen questions and over a thousand answers under their belt, earning over 34,000 in reputation so far. Their most active tags are r (the R language) and dataframe. They have provided a lot of meaningful feedback by testing newer features on Stack Overflow, including Collectives, Discussions, and now Challenges.
Thank you, M--, for creating one of the first community-authored challenges and for being an awesome part of what makes Stack Overflow so special!