You can now run an AI agent on your local machine and send it messages—all from azd, no portal required.

What’s new?

The azure.ai.agents extension adds two commands:

• azd ai agent run starts your agent locally with automatic dependency detection and installation.
• azd ai agent invoke sends a message to a running agent—whether it’s local or deployed in Azure AI Foundry.

Why it matters

Developing AI agents often means having to switch between your editor, a terminal, and a cloud portal to test changes. Each round trip slows you down. With run and invoke, your inner development loop stays in the terminal. Start your agent, send it a prompt, see the streamed response, and iterate—all without leaving your workflow.

How to use it

To start your agent locally, use azd ai agent run. The command detects your project type (Python, Node.js, etc.), installs dependencies, and launches the agent process. If you have multiple agents in your project, specify one by name. To send a message to your agent, use azd ai agent invoke. By default, invoke targets the remote Foundry endpoint; add --local to talk to a locally running agent instead.

azd ai agent run                          # Start the agent locally
azd ai agent run my-agent                 # Start a specific agent by name
azd ai agent invoke "Summarize this doc"  # Send a message to the remote endpoint
azd ai agent invoke "Hello" --local       # Send a message to a locally running agent

Session and conversation identifiers persist across invocations, so you can carry on a multi-turn conversation without extra flags.

Try it out

These commands are available in the azure.ai.agents extension v0.1.14-preview. To upgrade an existing installation:

azd extension upgrade azure.ai.agents

New to azd? Install it, then run azd ai agent init to get started.

Feedback

Have questions or ideas? File an issue or start a discussion on GitHub. Want to help shape the future of azd? Sign up for user research.

This feature was introduced in PR #7026 and contributed by Travis Angevine(https://github.com/trangevi).