Error 'No agent could be found with the following capabilities: msbuild, visualstudio, vstest'

I'm setting up a new build server using TFS 2015 and after I configured the agent, when I tried to queue a build I got this error:

No agent could be found with the following capabilities: msbuild, visualstudio, vstest

How can this be resolved?

Install Visual Studio on your build agent, then restart the build agent. Restarting the build agent will capture the added Capabilities.

Note: First of all, you can do all this with the community edition and TFS Express 2015 on your own server (for free up to five users) - so don't worry about needing to use the Visual Studio online version or paying for Visual Studio Professional.

It is very easy to misinterpret the error message provided and go off on a wild-goose chase trying to debug it.

Unfortunately the message itself is just badly worded and that's the real problem.

Here is what that error message really means:

"No agent could be found with the following capabilities: msbuild, visualstudio, vstest. In fact I didn't actually find ANY build agents configured for the selected build queue."

So you're thinking that doesn't apply to you because you just created a build agent?

Well, maybe you did, but here's what probably happened:

• You created a new pool (for no reason other than you just thought you ought to).
• You then created a queue under that pool.
• You ran the PowerShell script to create an agent and you assumed it put it in the pool you just created....
• But it didn't - it put it in the 'default' pool which you aren't even using...

Aha! So here's what happens when you build:

• You select a queue from the dropdown.
• TFS tries to build by looking for the pool that corresponds to that queue and it doesn't find any agents AT ALL there, so you get a stupid useless red-herring error message.

When I finally realized what happened I just deleted my cutely named pool + queue and just reverted to using the default pool.

Next time I will try to pay more attention to this message during the PowerShell configuration:

Configure this agent against which agent pool? (default pool name is 'default')

You will have to create a queue under the pool, but then your agent should start working.

If you have a genuine with a certain capability being absent from your agent you can check what your agent supports via the 'capabilities' tab shown here. Of course msbuild, visualstudio and vstest are all here :-)