Microsoft
Developer Blogs
Get the latest information, insights, and news from Microsoft.
Highlights
Aspire 13.5: Fresh pixels and better workflows
Azure Cosmos DB in the Agentic Era: Data Tools for Developers and AI Agents
Today I will... Modernize a .NET application
Latest posts
SharePoint Framework (SPFx) roadmap update – August 2026
SPFx 1.24 Beta 3 is now available, React 18 support is coming in 1.24, and a new Copilot Components preview program opens for customers and partners.
Azure Developer CLI (azd) – August 2026
Welcome to the August 2026 edition of the Azure Developer CLI () release blog. This post covers releases 1.30.0, 1.31.0, 1.31.1, 1.31.2, and 1.32.0. To share your feedback and questions, join the August release discussion on GitHub. Highlights: New features 🔌 Extensions The extension framework reached general availability this month. Read more in The Azure Developer CLI extension framework is generally available. 📦 Container deployment Breaking changes 🪲 Bugs fixed Provisioning and deployment Pipelines and update...
How Uno Platform uses .NET, MCP, and AI to build high quality apps
How Uno Platform built two Model Context Protocol servers in C# so AI agents can ground themselves in real documentation and then see and drive a running cross-platform .NET app.
Agent Harness: Making your claw production-ready
Part 4 of Build your own claw and agent harness with Microsoft Agent Framework. Over the last three parts our personal finance assistant grew from a single tool into a genuinely capable agent: it plans, reads your portfolio, asks before it trades, remembers what matters, loads skills on demand, reorganizes files with a shell, computes with CodeAct, and fans research out to background agents. It works on your machine. But "works on my machine" isn't the same as ready to run for other people. This final part closes that gap along four axes: To get there we make one structural change. Up t...
VSLive! @ Microsoft HQ: Developer Takeaways and Must-Watch Sessions
VSLive! @ Microsoft HQ 2026 was one of the most energizing VSLive! events I’ve attended. What stood out was the level of engagement over five days of learning and conversation from July 27 through July 31. Developers came ready to dig into the future of Visual Studio, .NET, and AI-assisted software development, and many Microsoft engineers and product managers were there to have those conversations directly. If you weren’t able to join us in Redmond, there’s still plenty you can take away from the event. The Microsoft-led sessions were recorded, so you can catch up on many of the topics that generated som...
Azure DevOps in the GitHub Copilot App
The Azure DevOps plugin is now available for the GitHub Copilot app, allowing you to view and manage Azure DevOps pull requests and work items directly in the Copilot app. What you can do The initial release supports: You can find your assigned work, make changes, and complete pull requests without leaving the GitHub Copilot app. Get started Open the GitHub Copilot app and select Customize. From the Editor's picks tab, find and install the Azure DevOps plugin. Once the plugin is installed, start a new session from chat or select New session from the plugin card under Editor's picks. Sign in and ent...
Visual Studio Code 1.135
Learn what's new in Visual Studio Code 1.135 Read the full article
I Need My CI/CD Pipeline to Access Cosmos DB Without Using a Secret
In the last post we walked through why RBAC broke your app and how to fix it. Your app is now running on a managed identity, keys are off, and everything is green. Then your build pipeline runs, and it needs to seed test data. Suddenly you're staring at a secret in your CI settings and wondering if you just undid all that work. As we continue this security series, let's get your pipeline to Cosmos DB with no secret anywhere. The situation You did the hard part. Your app uses , you assigned a data plane role, and you set . Passwordless, done. Then you look at your CI/CD pipeline and find this sitting in yo...
The Visual Studio Debugger Agentic Workflow Gets a Test-Driven Upgrade
A few months ago, we introduced a new guided agentic workflow in the Visual Studio Debugger Agent designed to help you move from a bug report to a verified fix without spending your morning guessing where to begin. If you missed that announcement, check out Stop Hunting Bugs: Meet the New Visual Studio Debugger Agent to see how the Agent builds a hypothesis, guides the debugger, investigates your application at runtime, and validates the final change. Today, we’re building on that experience with a new Test-Driven Investigation workflow. The Debugger Agent can now create or identify a focused test, debug th...
Introducing agent and workflow channels
An agent or workflow is only useful when people and other systems can reach it through the interfaces and channels they already use. That might be an OpenAI Responses client, Telegram, another agent using A2A, or an MCP client. As a builder of agents and workflow, you need control over which channels you expose it to and how it behaves. To help, we're introducing channels in Microsoft Agent Framework for agents and workflows in Python. Choose the channels your application needs The new packages are organized around a small shared hosting core and a set of channel-specific integrations: ...
Copilot Code Reviews for Azure Repos (public preview)
Today, we’re announcing the public preview of GitHub Copilot Code Review for Azure Repos, making the feature available to all Azure DevOps customers using the service. There’s no longer a need to sign up for early access. Customers can now enable Copilot Code Review for their Azure Repos repositories and start using it. With the public preview, we’re also introducing several improvements we’ve made over the past couple of months based on what we’ve learned during the technical preview. Before getting started, be sure to read the official documentation for details on how Copilot Code Review works, how to enable ...
Introducing the Agent Host for persistent, portable agent sessions
Explore how the VS Code Agent Host and AHP support multiple agent harnesses with durable, synchronized local and remote sessions. Read the full article
.NET Conf 2026 – Save the Date
.NET Conf returns November 10-12, 2026, with three days of sessions, community, and the launch of .NET 11.
What Kind of Packaged Process Is It?
As previously discussed, we can divide processes into the two broad categories of packaged vs unpackaged, based on if the process HAS or LACKS package identity. Packaged processes can be divided into three broad categories: All three have package identity, but they make different tradeoffs between compatibility and modern packaged behavior. RuntimeBehavior Packages specify how an application process is created and runs via multiple properties in . The RuntimeBehavior attribute clearly expresses this: is a Universal app. It was first introduced in Windows 81. New lingo appeared with it, initially ref...
Start here: Azure SQL Foundations series
Most developers I talk to aren't asking whether Azure SQL Database can handle their next app. They're asking where to start when it comes to modernization, migration, and AI in the database. If you're reading this, you're probably in a similar boat: you've got an existing schema or databases, a scaling question you haven't had to answer yet, and a growing list of AI features you're expected to have an opinion about. That's why we built the path we kept describing in calls, with customers, and in the community. The Azure SQL Database Foundations series are four videos that take you from your first Hyperscal...
Visual Studio August Update — Work Smarter Across Models and Branches
Tune Copilot model thinking effort, share custom agents across your organization, track usage, and simplify complex Git workflows with worktrees and submodule support.
Try Azure SRE Agent with no always-on charges
We are happy to announce a 30-day trial experience for Azure SRE Agent. New customers can create and configure the SRE Agent at their own pace, with no charges for setup time or keeping agents ready. During the trial, you can connect your agents to telemetry, source code, incident management platforms, and other operational tools, and pay only for the Azure Agent Units (AAUs) consumed when your agents perform work. We are also excited to share the GA of Azure SRE Agent VNet integration and the Public Preview of Live Reports. With VNet support, the agent operates under your existing network controls, so it can ...
Why didn’t the Windows Entertainment Pack just run the MS-DOS version inside an emulator?
It wouldn't be a <I>Windows</I> Entertainment Pack then, would it?
PowerToys 0.101 is here: Window Hopper, Insider updates, and Command Palette compact mode
We're back with a fresh PowerToys release! PowerToys 0.101 introduces Window Hopper for quickly moving between windows from the same app, a redesigned update experience with Stable and Insider channels, and compact mode for Command Palette. This release also continues our WinUI 3 modernization, brings on-device Phi Silica transformations to Advanced Paste, and adds a big set of improvements across PowerDisplay and Shortcut Guide. Grab the update by checking for updates in PowerToys or by heading to the release page. Let's dive in! 🪟 Meet Window Hopper If you regularly have several windows open from the same a...
Unlocking the Power of AI for Every Developer in Visual Studio with Bring your Own Model
The best AI in Visual Studio is the AI you can bring with you. Developers don't work in a single-model world anymore. You might reach for one model for everyday coding, another for a domain-specific problem, and an approved model for work that must stay within your organization's governance boundaries. So, the question we hear most often isn't which model is best. It's, can I use mine? We're bringing Bring Your Own Model (BYOM) in Preview to Visual Studio, making it available and enabled by default across Community, Professional, and Enterprise SKUs. This Preview focuses on the developer experience available t...
Java OpenJDK August 2026 Critical Patch Update
Hello Java customers! We are happy to announce the latest August 2026 critical patch update release for the Microsoft Build of OpenJDK. Check our release notes page for details on fixes and enhancements or download and install the binaries today. The source code of our builds are now available on GitHub for further inspection: Microsoft Build of OpenJDK specific updates OpenJDK 25 OpenJDK 21 OpenJDK 17 OpenJDK 11 Summary of Upstream Updates OpenJDK Vulnerability Advisory August 2026 OpenJDK 25 OpenJDK 21 OpenJDK 17 ...
From dotnet run to Foundry Hosted Agent in 3 lines of C#
You built an agent with Microsoft Agent Framework and it works great on your machine. Now what? Turns out deploying it to production takes 1 NuGet package, 3 lines of C#, and 2 commands. Let's do it.
Explore new features available in C# 15 preview
C# 15 ships with .NET 11. It adds union types, closed hierarchies, a preview of the updated unsafe model, and a few smaller changes that remove everyday ceremony.
Powering Memory in Foundry Agent Service, with Azure Cosmos DB
Move from a locally composed memory-enabled agent to a deployed Foundry Agent Service agent, with keyless Azure infrastructure and an interactive browser sample. In Native Agent Memory for Microsoft Agent Framework, Powered by Azure Cosmos DB, we introduced : a Microsoft Agent Framework context provider that extracts useful information from conversations, stores it in Azure Cosmos DB, and retrieves it before later agent runs. That article used a locally composed Agent Framework agent and . It was a useful way to isolate the memory concepts: one provider, two lifecycle hooks, and a stable u...
Comparing the two holograms on the Windows 95 box
Filling in with your imagination.
Today I will… Modernize a .NET application
Today I will modernize a .NET Framework application to .NET 10 using the GitHub Copilot modernization tooling built-in to Visual Studio. The tooling helps us upgrade applications running on legacy versions of .NET and also migrate them to Azure. Today we're going to focus on the upgrade portion. And, the tooling will do all the work for us! But it doesn't do everything at once, and that's good. It introduces checkpoints into the .NET upgrade process to tell us what it has been up to we can then guide it towards the outcome we want. And at each of those checkpoints it creates a markdown file t...
Reducing C++ template bloat by factoring out the type-dependent portions of the function, practical exam
Applying our principles.
Reducing C++ template bloat by factoring out the type-dependent portions of the function
Looking for consolidation points.
Go 1.27.0-1 Microsoft build now available
A new release of the Microsoft build of Go is now available for download.
Go 1.26.7-1 and 1.25.14-1 Microsoft builds now available
A new release of the Microsoft build of Go is now available for download.
Visual Studio Code 1.134
Learn what's new in Visual Studio Code 1.134 Read the full article
Outgrowing SQL Server Express? Upgrade to Azure SQL Database Free Tier in 3 Steps
If you’ve been building local prototypes, internal tools, web backends, or lightweight services on SQL Server Express, you know the routine: it’s free, familiar, and gets the job done – until you hit hardware limits or spend weekends manual backup scripts and handling OS patches. Learn how to upgrade from SQL Server Express to Azure SQL Database free tier in 3 simple steps. Whether you're running SQL Server 2022 (or older) and hitting the hard 10 GB storage wall, or using SQL Server 2025 and realizing 50 GB of disk space doesn't solve the strict 1.4 GB memory bottleneck, staying on Express limits your applica...
MSSQL Extension for VS Code: SQL Formatter, Azure SQL Database Provisioning, and More
Writing and maintaining SQL is easier when you can eliminate repetitive steps and keep your scripts cleanly formatted. With the MSSQL extension for VS Code v1.45, we're introducing the Public Preview of the SQL Formatter alongside the General Availability of Azure SQL Database Provisioning and Shortcuts Configuration. You can now apply consistent T-SQL formatting across your projects, create free tier cloud databases with automated post-deployment actions, and streamline frequently used commands and queries directly inside Visual Studio Code. What's new in MSSQL extension for VS Code v1.45 Here's a summary of t...
On wrapping a callable in a lambda that just calls it with the same parameters
Just use the callable directly.
Aspire 13.5: Fresh pixels and better workflows
Aspire 13.5 refreshes the dashboard and aspire.dev, expands the Interaction Service, adds cross-scope Azure references and Kubernetes persistent volumes, and brings live terminals into the AppHost.