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Enabling Consistent AI-Assisted Engineering with GitHub Copilot Plugins
When an engineer or team creates useful agentic artifacts for their daily work (e.g., instructions, skills, and MCP configurations), others naturally want to adopt them when they see how those artifacts could help with their own work. Sharing the files is straightforward, but keeping those consumers supplied with fixes, updated guidance, and compatible tool configurations requires a way to maintain and distribute those artifacts. That challenge shaped our work with a large enterprise customer as we designed and built a migration and modernization toolkit together. Their internal and third-party engineering tea...
Is it MSIX? Part 1: How to Tell if a Process Is Packaged
Overheard in a recent conversation: Enterprise Administrator: "The ***redacted*** application is awesome, but it really should be an MSIX package." Microsoft Developer: "Ummm, it already is." That sparked another question: How can you tell if an application is packaged or unpackaged? Turns out there's a few simple ways to check. The key difference between packaged and unpackaged processes is whether they have package identity. Task Manager provides a convenient way to quickly see this: The list of processes now shows Package name: For example: In this example, ...
Visual Studio September Update – Power Your Workflow with Your Model
Bring your own AI model with updates to BYOM, fix NuGet vulnerabilities from the Error List, explore pull requests with the Git agent, see which operand decides an if condition, and attach to Podman containers.
DiskANN Vector Index and Vector Search Are Now Generally Available in Azure SQL
Today, we are announcing the general availability of DiskANN Vector Index & Search across Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance with the always-up-to-date update policy, and SQL database in Microsoft Fabric. DiskANN brings scalable approximate nearest-neighbor search directly to the SQL engine. Developers can store vectors alongside relational data and combine vector similarity with the filters, joins, security policies, and transactional data their applications already rely on. Why Vector indexes matter Applications use embeddings to represent the semantic meaning of text, images, products, doc...
What’s new across Microsoft SQL at SQLCon/FabCon Europe 2026
Live From Barcelona Woo! I’m posting this live from the first ever European SQLCon (joint conference with FabCon EU), and the second ever SQLCon. The energy here is great, as the community comes together in Barcelona and as we prepare to go on the keynote stage and share what’s new! A heartfelt nod to the internal team, our customers, and the community who all contributed to what we are releasing today – the feedback to build to feedback loop is getting tighter, and each is critical for Microsoft SQL to build a better platform. If you're here in Barcelona, the full schedule from the Microsoft SQL product team...
How to build an app on Azure SQL with an AI coding agent
Developers have trusted SQL for decades, since long before AI existed. Now coding agents help choose the database, and they favor the one they can get running in the first few minutes. So today we're shipping two things for that moment. Microsoft SQL Agent Skills teach your coding agent how Azure SQL actually works, so it stops guessing. The Azure SQL Developer Hub hands you a prompt and a free database, and your agent builds a working app from there. Both are open source. Both are live now. Together, they make Azure SQL a database your coding agent can build on, starting with one prompt. In short: Install the...
Announcing Public Preview for Azure Cosmos DB in Fabric Database Hub!
Azure Cosmos DB support in Fabric Database Hub is now available in public preview. For the first time, Azure Cosmos DB customers can discover and monitor their accounts from Database Hub alongside other Microsoft database engines. Database Hub provides a single place to view every Azure Cosmos DB account you can access, compare health and performance, review key security findings, and create new accounts. Your accounts remain in their existing subscriptions, resource groups, and regions. A single view of your Azure Cosmos DB estate Most Azure Cosmos DB customers do not operate a single account. Accoun...
Get started with the GitHub Copilot app: a free, hands-on course
Learn to direct AI coding agents, review their work, and build reliable development workflows with this free GitHub Copilot app course.
MSSQL Extension for VS Code: New Getting Started Page, Agent skills, SQL Formatter, and more
Get started faster with common SQL workflows and resources in one place. The MSSQL extension for VS Code v1.46 introduces a new Getting Started page experience in Public Preview with quick actions, guided walkthroughs, dev container templates, and one-click installation of the latest Microsoft SQL agent skills for GitHub Copilot. Available to all customers starting with this release, the skills can be installed by anyone. This release also brings the SQL Formatter to General Availability with more control over T-SQL style, along with reusable Object Explorer filters and expanded Data API builder capabilities....
Build Agentic UI with the new Blazor AI components
Build Agentic UI with the new Blazor AI components for streamed content, tools, approvals, shared state, and generative experiences.
SQLAlchemy 2.1 brings built-in support for mssql-python
We're pleased to share that SQLAlchemy 2.1.0 is now generally available, with built-in support for mssql-python, Microsoft's Python driver for SQL Server. You can now use it with SQLAlchemy's ORM and Core APIs through the first-party dialect. If SQLAlchemy is already part of how you build, we want this to feel like a natural next step - not another thing to learn. The goal is simple: help you connect to SQL Server and Azure SQL with less setup, while keeping the tools and patterns you know. This integration is now part of the production release, and SQLAlchemy 2.1 is the version installed by default when y...
Announcing the Public Preview of Local Time Zone Support in Azure SQL Database
We are thrilled to announce the public preview of local time zone support in Azure SQL Database. Starting today, you can configure the time zone directly at the database or session level — all from T-SQL, without changing any infrastructure settings. This feature addresses one of the most consistently requested capabilities from the Azure SQL community, and it brings Azure SQL Database into alignment with ANSI SQL standard and competitors such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Oracle. Background SQL Server on Windows and Linux inherits the time zone from the host operating system, giving customers full contro...
C++ reminder: Function-local static variables are initialized only once, even if it looks like they get initialized multiple times
Only on first execution.
Visual Studio Code CMake Tools 1.24
CMake Tools 1.24 includes several reliability fixes and productivity improvements. You can run tests from the editor, save preset-backed cache edits as user overrides, and keep source-file lists up to date. See the CMake Tools release page and full changelog for details. Thank you to the community contributors whose work is included in these updates: Run and debug CTest tests from the editor Discovered CTest tests with resolved source locations now have Run and Debug CodeLens actions in the editor. These complement the existing Run and Debug actions and source navigation in the Pr...
WinAppCLI v0.7.0 – Windows Sandbox automation, Native AOT support, single-file applications, and more
Windows App Development CLI v0.7.0 has shipped, and we're excited to share it. Here are the highlights: Grab it with winget install Microsoft.WinAppCLI, or head to the repo for npm and other install options. Here's a tour of what's new. 🏝️ Run and automate your app in Windows Sandbox The new --on sandbox option runs your app inside a persistent Windows Sandbox instead of on your desktop. You build on your machine as usual, and WinApp deploys, registers, launches, and UI-automates the app inside the guest. The app is never installed on your host, and ...
AG-UI Protocol now has a first-class .NET SDK
The new AG-UI .NET SDK enables .NET services to expose and consume interoperable agent endpoints using Microsoft.Extensions.AI.
Debugging walkthrough: Access violation on nonsense instruction, episode 3
Trying to figure out what the interloper was trying to.
Control where your hosted agent connects with network egress in Foundry Agent Service
Define and attach an outbound policy to a hosted agent in Microsoft Foundry, observe calls in Audit, and verify allowed and denied destinations under Enforced mode.
From Chatbots to Automated Agents: Routines in Microsoft Foundry Are Now Generally Available
Agents are rapidly evolving beyond chat. The first generation of agents waited for a person to send a message. Today, organizations want agents that can monitor work, respond to business events, and continue tasks over time. An agent might triage a newly opened GitHub issue, respond when a message appears in a Microsoft Teams channel, prepare a report every morning, or check back on a long-running process until it finishes. Building that automation yourself is difficult. You need schedulers, event listeners, webhooks, queues, infrastructure, authentication, run history, and monitoring—before you can focus on t...
What’s new in Microsoft Agent Framework: Interactive experiences, memory, and resilient execution
An agent that answers a question is a starting point. An agent that completes useful work needs more: an interface users can interact with, memory beyond the current conversation, an appropriate environment for executing code, and a way to recover when work is interrupted. Recent Microsoft Agent Framework updates address those needs across .NET and Python. Here’s how to use them—from connecting an agent to your application to running and debugging longer-lived workflows. Prerequisites and setup Sign in with az login. Set FOUNDRY_PROJECT_ENDPOINT to your Foundry project endpoint and FOUNDRY_MODEL to your depl...
No, really, you need to pass all unhandled messages to DefWindowProc, part 2
Another example to add to the list.
Documentation Is the New Source Code
A field guide to building a layered, AI-readable documentation system — instruction files, skills, ADRs, and tests — that turns your repo into a reliable substrate for Copilot, agents, and high-velocity engineering workflows.
Microsoft is updating its author-signing certificate starting September 23, 2026
Starting September 23, 2026, Microsoft is updating the author-signing certificate used for NuGet packages. Customers using trusted signer policies or certificate fingerprint verification should add the new certificate as soon as possible.
Join the Copilot Dev Camp Summit Fall Edition on September 30
The very first Copilot Dev Camp Summit will take place on September 30, 2026, at 8:00 AM Pacific Time, launching a new quarterly event for the Copilot Extensibility community. This free, quarterly online event brings together developers, makers, product experts, and the broader technical community to explore the evolving capabilities of Microsoft 365 Copilot, Cowork, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft IQ, and their extensibility ecosystems. Whether you build Copilot experiences, create agents, or simply want to learn what is coming next, the Summit offers an excellent opportunity to hear directly from experts, ask...
When working with Win32 FILETIME, don’t forget that you have std::chrono now
Let the library do the math for you.
Faster C++ code intelligence for Copilot CLI with Whole Codebase Indexing
C++ repositories can contain millions of lines of code spread across deeply connected source files and headers. Without a reusable index, navigating to definitions, finding references, or searching for symbols may require portions of that information to be analyzed again as you move through the repository. C++ code intelligence in GitHub Copilot CLI is now faster with support for Whole Codebase Indexing (WCI). Powered by the Microsoft C++ Language Server, WCI uses your project’s compilation information to maintain a persistent index of symbols and relationships across source files and headers, allowing Copilot...
Today I will… debug a production crash
We've all experienced this, the desktop application is hanging, the window is greyed out, and we're just waiting for it to start to respond. Or we're on a website and are sure that it was going to load faster than this, but we're just waiting the loading icon spin around and around. These sorts of problems, when they happen in production, can be difficult to diagnose since you often need to replicate them, from machine specifications to traffic loads. Today we're going to look at one of the possible problems, having too many active threads running in a C# application, and how we can debug the crash after the fac...
Creating a memory dump in C#
Learn how to create a memory dump in C# to capture the state of your application for debugging purposes.
Footprint vs Payload files
Payload files Payload files are files stored in and delivered by the package. This includes your code, assets, and data, such as executables, DLLs, images, configuration files, and resources. For example: Content files The term content is sometimes used in MSIX-related APIs and documentation, but it does not provide as clean a classification as payload and footprint. For example, the Packaging API associates a content type with payload files. To avoid ambiguity, we'll use payload file when referring to files stored in the package. Footprint files Footprint files are package metadata and infrastructur...
Using Azure Blob Storage as a durable filesystem for LangChain Deep Agents
LangChain Deep Agents is an open-source agent harness with built-in capabilities for building LLM-powered agents and applications, including complex, multi-step workflows. A model can reason and generate responses, but it needs a harness to do useful work over time. The harness provides the tools and runtime that let the model retrieve the right context, take actions, and manage work across multiple steps. Deep Agents supplies that structure through planning, context management, a virtual filesystem, memory and skills, specialized subagents, and human approval points. Filesystems give agents a familiar way ...
A brief history of Windows scroll bar shortcuts
Right-clicking and shift-clicking.
Foundry hosted agent isolation with Microsoft Agent Framework
Foundry hosted agent isolation exposes two independent controls. User isolation identifies whose data may be used. At the same time, Foundry hosted session isolation identifies where code and files continue to live. For each control, Foundry can resolve the value or the application can provide it. Therefore, the available choices support direct callers, trusted middle tiers, application-managed sessions, and shared session pools. While Foundry hosted agents are generally available in Microsoft Foundry, the AgentServer SDKs and the Microsoft Agent Framework Foundry hosting packages for .NET and Python are stil...
PostgreSQL to SQL Field Notes: Date & Time
Moving from PostgreSQL to SQL Server? Learn the key differences between timestamp, timestamptz, datetime2, and datetimeoffset, including precision, time zones, offsets, and storage.
What’s the highest legal FILETIME? Is it safe to use?
Being wary of how people use it and how it interacts with other types.
Knowledge cutoff is a poor proxy for model capability
A model can fail on features released before its knowledge cutoff, then succeed on ones released after it. We tested hundreds of product changes and found that the date tells you far less than the work does.
Spec-Driven Development comes to Azure Cosmos DB: The First Database Extension for GitHub Spec Kit
AI coding agents can write much of an application's code, but developers still need to review the decisions behind it. For a Cosmos DB application, that includes choosing partition keys, modeling access patterns, and configuring the client. Those decisions affect cost, performance, and reliability long after the code compiles. We've written before about how Azure Cosmos DB supports agents at query time, with tools and guidance for exploring and querying data. Today we're announcing the public preview of the Azure Cosmos DB extension for GitHub Spec Kit, the first database extension in its ecosystem. It brings Co...