Microsoft
Developer Blogs

Save the date and tune in for our free, livestream event on March 23. Discover Aspire and learn how it can transform the way you build and deploy your distributed apps and agents.

Part 1 of the Azure Skills Plugin series Coding agents like GitHub Copilot and Claude Code are great at code, but getting your app to production on Azure is not just about writing code. Really, it is about making the right calls. Which service fits this app? Which SKU fits this...

Introducing the dotnet/skills repository and how .NET agent skills can improve coding agent workflows.

Building AI agents is getting easier. Deploying them as part of a real application, with multiple services, persistent state, and production infrastructure, is where things get complicated. Developers from the .NET community have requested whether a real-world example that shows running...

When I first found Visual Studio Dev Essentials, it felt like discovering a hidden door in the developer toolkit world. I’d heard about free tools and cloud credits, but I wasn’t sure if it would really matter in day-to-day coding life. The short answer: it absolutely...

Today we’re announcing the general availability of Email and SMS one‑time passcode (OTP) as second‑factor MFA for Native Authentication in Microsoft Entra External ID. This enables developers to add step‑up security to native sign‑in and sign‑up flows while keeping users fully...

Look for the conflicting definitions to see where they are coming from.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is now embedded as an in-app sidecar within Power Apps, Dynamics 365 Sales, and Dynamics 365 Customer Service—removing the need to switch between apps to find context or complete steps. 

February brings Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6 with 1M-token context, GPT-Realtime-1.5 and GPT-Audio-1.5, Grok 4.0 GA, the Microsoft Agent Framework reaching Release Candidate, and the Foundry REST API quietly going GA — laying the foundation for imminent SDK GA announcements across Python, .NET, JS/TS, and Java.

We’re improving how add-ins appear on the ribbon in Outlook on the web and the new Outlook on Windows. These updates make add-ins easier to find and align the experience across Outlook clients.

Today we are excited to announce the Release Candidate (RC) of TypeScript 6.0! To get started using the RC, you can get it through npm with the following command: npm install -D typescript@rc TypeScript 6.0 is a unique release in that we intend for it to be the last release based on...

A new release of the Microsoft build of Go including security fixes is now available for download.

It's already gone. If you need more information, you should have been remembering it.

When setting up an experiment is complex, agents can automate the process to make it faster and more reliable.

Join us at GDC Festival of Gaming 2026 for a deep dive into Visual Studio, GitHub Copilot, PowerToys, and the Windows tools that speed up your daily dev workflow. We'll show how these tools work together to boost productivity and cut friction across your entire inner loop. Session...

We briefly paused our quarterly release cycle to focus on reliability and performance, but now we're back with Windows Terminal 1.25! We are also updating Windows Terminal stable to version 1.24, which will include all of the features from this previous blog post. Some notable features...

Discover what’s new in the v1.0 release of the official MCP C# SDK, including enhanced authorization, richer metadata, and powerful patterns for tool calling and long-running requests.

Perhaps it's because you dispatched it.

For the last decade, platform engineering has relied on explicit API interaction layers: CLIs, SDKs, pipelines, wrappers, and UI workflows that translate human intent into machine‑safe API calls. AI agents are now short‑circuiting much of that stack. By combining natural language...

  Hey WinUI developers! If you’re new around here, WinUI Gallery is the go-to app for exploring WinUI 3 controls, samples, design guidance, and handy tools — all in one place. Today, we’re excited to announce WinUI Gallery 2.8, bringing jump list support, new samples,...

MSVC Build Tools v14.51 improves performance through a wide range of new optimizations.

What's new in the Visual Studio Code February 2026 Release (1.110). Read the full article

When JSON Met Graph Part 2 of 4 - The Multimodal Database Series A note on naming. Throughout this series, when we say "SQL Server 2025" we also mean Azure SQL. The multimodal capabilities we discuss - native JSON, graph, vector, and columnstore - are available across both the...

The excitement is building as we head into the 2026 Game Developer Conference and the DirectX team has a lot to share. We will be showcasing major updates in asset streaming, GPU tooling, ML-powered real-time graphics on Windows, and shader compilation at...

Of course, anything can happen if you break the rules.

The new azd appservice swap command makes deployment slot swaps fast and intuitive.

Learn GitHub Copilot CLI with this free, 8-chapter hands-on course. Review code, generate tests, debug issues, and build custom agents and skills - all from your terminal. No AI experience needed. Works with GitHub Copilot Free. Clone the repo or open in Codespaces to get started.

Just some useless trivia.

Data API builder (DAB) 1.7+ delivers secure MCP-based CRUD access with deterministic, policy-enforced query generation and an upcoming aggregate tool that enables complex, production-safe analytical questions without exposing raw SQL to AI agents.

You get notifications that might not make sense.

The JavaScript AI Build‑a‑thon Season 2 starts today! Join a free, four‑week, hands‑on program—from Local AI and RAG pipelines to multi‑agent hackathon—designed specifically for JavaScript/TypeScript developers.

Windows App Development CLI v0.2 is here! This release is driven largely by community feedback and packs in native .NET project support, manifest placeholders that eliminate hardcoded executable names, Microsoft Store Developer CLI integration, a revamped help experience, and more....

Modern software development is moving fast—and AI is now a practical part of how Microsoft developers design, build, and ship applications every day. From writing code in Visual Studio and VS Code, to building cloud-native apps on Azure, developers are looking for ways to stay...

You can now equip your Microsoft Agent Framework agents with portable, reusable skill packages that provide domain expertise on demand — without changing a single line of your agent's core instructions. With built-in skills providers for both .NET and Python, your agents can discover...

We are excited to release a new update to the Team Calendar extension. This update includes a series of visual refinements across the extension, introducing a more consistent design language, smoother transitions when expanding and collapsing sections, improved contrast for better...

Making sure it triggers when you need it, and not when you don't.

Java is the backbone of enterprise software engineering, and the conversations happening around it right now are the most exciting they've been in years. From AI-assisted development workflows to Kubernetes performance tuning, the community is moving fast - and JCON Europe 2026 is one of...

Running MongoDB at scale eventually forces a trade-off: invest heavily in managing your own infrastructure or move to a managed service and risk losing the compatibility and portability your team depends on.  Azure DocumentDB is a fully managed, MongoDB-compatible database on...

If you want to skip the explain and get started super quick with adoption + impact insights, use gh-devlake to deploy a GitHub Copilot impact dashboard in a few CLI commands. So! You've rolled out GitHub Copilot to your engineering teams. You've got the built-in dashboards. You...

Today, we are pleased to announce that Shader Model 6.9 and other features have been officially released with Agility SDK 1.619 and complementary DXC 1.9.2602.16. Many of these features have been in preview status since 2025. Simultaneously, we are releasing a handful of new preview...

Today we released PIX 2602.25 and 2602.25-preview, which can be downloaded here. These releases include everything in the previous 2601.15 release, plus: 2602.25: includes support for all of the new D3D12 features released today in Agility SDK 619.0, including Shader Model 6.9, DXR...

Discover how Microsoft.Extensions.VectorData brings unified vector database access to .NET - one interface for semantic search across any vector store with built-in support for embeddings, filtering, and RAG patterns.

Introducing Fence Barriers We are excited to share the preview release of Fence Barriers (Tier-1), a new capability now available in AgilitySDK 1.719-preview (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx12agility/). Fence Barriers expand on Enhanced Barriers to provide support for...

Now officially released, Shader Execution Reordering (SER) is an addition to DirectX Raytracing that enables application shader code inform hardware how to find coherency across rays so they can be sorted to execute better in parallel.  SER support is a required feature in Shader...

DirectX Raytracing (DXR) now supports Opacity Micromaps (OMMs), enabling hardware to handle alpha tested geometry more efficiently than relying only on costly AnyHit shader invocations. At GDC 2025 DXR 1.2 was announced including OMMs, and you can see it discussed in this: GDC...

Azure SDK releases every month. In this post, you'll find this month's highlights and release notes.

Using an Is­Dialog­Message extension point.

How we built a production-ready MCP server with OAuth 2.1 authentication and On-Behalf-Of flow for Microsoft Graph, navigating a rapidly evolving specification.

Learn how we extended next edit suggestions to work across your entire file, reducing friction and improving productivity in GitHub Copilot. Read the full article

Part 1 of 4 - The Multimodal Database Series This is a four-part series about what happens when a single database engine handles relational, document, graph, vector, and analytical workloads natively - and what you stop paying for when it does. You spin up a database, point an agent...

The MSSQL Extension for VS Code continues to evolve, delivering features that make SQL development more integrated, more powerful, and more developer-friendly. In version v1.40.0, we're introducing the ADS Migration Toolkit, Basic Database Management, Flat File Import, Database Backup...

This post announces the February 2026 release of the Azure Developer CLI (`azd`).

Process the message before you let Is­Dialog­Message see it.

We move towards spring 2026 with strong momentum across the SharePoint Framework and an increasing sense of excitement across the ecosystem. SPFx continues to be a foundational platform for building intelligent, secure, and scalable experiences across Microsoft 365, with adoption growing...

Customers have asked for greater user control over add-in launch behavior in Office. We are making three adjustments to our platform to address this customer feedback.

Vibe Coding. IntelliSense on Steroids. Intention-Based Development. Call it what makes you happy - it's "just" the next evolutionary step in software development for me. Which let me build my stranded 82-year-old retirement-resistant mom an ersatz time-study app when her dongle died at midnight.

This month’s Visual Studio update continues our focus on helping you move faster and stay in flow, with practical improvements across AI assistance, debugging, testing, and modernization. Building on the momentum from January’s editor updates, the February release brings smarter...

Azure MCP Server now offers first-class Python support via PyPI and uvx, making it easier than ever for Python developers to integrate Azure into their agentic workflows.

Intercepting the flow in your message loop.

Last year we published AI Dev Gallery, an open-source app full of interactive Windows AI examples. A common follow-up question from Electron developers has been: “How can we build similar on-device AI experiences in our Electron apps?” In this blog, we’ll walk through how we built...

Sniffing the synchronous keyboard state is still not precise enough.

Data API builder (DAB) supports multi-source configurations Data API builder (DAB) connects to your database with a safe REST or GraphQL endpoint. But DAB is not limited to just one database. Using a multi-source configuration, you can connect to more than one database simultaneously. ...

Sniffing the asynchronous keyboard state.

Agentic systems have some discretion in the parameters they sent to tooling, but there are cases, such as experimentation, when you need 100% adherence to a set of parameters.

We're thrilled to announce that Microsoft Agent Framework has reached Release Candidate status for both .NET and Python. Release Candidate is an important milestone on the road to General Availability — it means the API surface is stable, and all features that we intend to release with...

We're happy to announce that Microsoft Agent Framework is now in Release Candidate status for both .NET and Python. Release Candidate is an important milestone on the road to General Availability — it means the API surface is stable, and all features that we intend to release with...

C++ code navigation and build system tooling play an important role in the developer inner-loop. Code navigation tooling provides a precise, semantic understanding of your codebase, while build system tooling helps you express build configurations and variants for reproducible builds. In...

Agents in Visual Studio now go beyond a single general-purpose assistant. We're shipping a set of curated preset agents that tap into deep IDE capabilities; debugging, profiling, testing alongside a framework for building your own custom agents tailored to how your team works. Built in...

Summarizing the flow.

Today we are releasing the first preview of the Microsoft C++ (MSVC) Build Tools version 14.51. This update, shipping in the latest Visual Studio 2026 version 18.4 Insiders release, introduces many C++23 conformance changes, bug fixes, and runtime performance improvements. Check out the...

Catch up on all the new models, audio updates, fine-tuning expansions, and SDK updates from Microsoft Foundry spanning December 2025 and January 2026 — including GPT-5.2, Codex Max, DeepSeek V3.2, FLUX.2, and the azure-ai-projects v2 beta consolidation.

The February 2026 release This release includes the Python Environments extension... Keep on reading to learn more!

For decades, DBAs relied on linked servers to stitch data together. If you needed data from two places, you wired them up and moved on. It worked. It was straightforward. It felt native to SQL. But what if linked servers are not an option? What if policy blocks them? What if one of the...

In April 2025, we announced the deprecation schedule for legacy TFVC check-in policies. This change was required due to limitations in how those policies were previously implemented and stored. The old policies have been marked as obsolete, and you can replace them by selecting the...

I guess it could, but why bother?

Planned team investments for 2026 for PowerShell, OpenSSH, DSC, and related tooling.

Run JMESPath queries on azd JSON output, including error messages.

Perhaps we missed it at first, but Copilot is more than comfortable with SQL. This goes beyond autocomplete. This is moving from nothing to a working database without leaving our tools. Have we really arrived? Yes, sort of. For database engineers and app engineers alike, we have crossed...

We're excited to announce the first wave of speakers for Microsoft JDConf 2026, our flagship community event for Java at Microsoft. Whether you’re architecting enterprise microservices, modernizing legacy systems, or building intelligent applications, JDConf 2026 will equip you with the...

Final build, final, final, final 2, ship this one.

One of the challenges teams face when working with large boards or displaying multiple fields on work item cards is limited screen space. This became even more noticeable with the rollout of the New Boards hub, which introduced additional spacing and padding for improved readability....

Is it really a trick when reading the file is the purpose of the program?

In the rapidly evolving landscape of large language models (LLMs), achieving precise control over model behavior while maintaining quality has become a critical challenge. While models like GPT-4 demonstrate impressive capabilities, ensuring their outputs align with human...

A new release of the Microsoft build of Go is now available for download.

See if it matches the scan code.

Java developers face a tough trifecta: keeping mission-critical systems running, modernizing legacy apps, and weaving AI into real engineering workflows, all without increasing risk. At DevNexus 2026, the Microsoft Java team is tackling these challenges head-on.  This...

Introduction The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) has undergone some important changes in how it handles Entra ID app registration and security models. Here you can find additional details about what was updated and about the new application IDs used by SPFx. These changes have important...

The SQL + AI Datathon is a hands‑on challenge designed to show how the foundations for building modern, intelligent applications with SQL. Over a set of guided missions and a focused open hack, you’ll learn how to combine SQL with embeddings, semantic search, and Retrieval...

Check whether it is an extended key.

When we launched the Microsoft Learn Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server in June 2025, our goal was simple: make it effortless for AI agents to use trusted, up-to-date Microsoft Learn documentation. GitHub Copilot and other agents are increasingly common, and they need to be able to...

Today we are announcing the beta release of TypeScript 6.0! To get started using the beta, you can get it through npm with the following command: npm install -D typescript@beta TypeScript 6.0 is a unique release in that we intend for it to be the last release based on the current...

GitHub Copilot testing for .NET is now available in Visual Studio 18.3, offering AI-powered tools to quickly create, build, and run unit tests. With flexible prompts and full IDE integration, it supports testing from single methods to entire solutions, helping reduce repetitive tasks and speed up feedback. Try it and share your feedback to shape its future.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have reached a point where general intelligence is no longer the bottleneck. The real challenge in enterprise AI systems behavioral alignment ensuring models that produce consistent, reliable, policy-compliant outputs on a scale. Prompt engineering and...

Refactoring at scale is a time-consuming and error-prone process for developers. In large codebases, developers have relied on manual searches and incremental edits across multiple files to accomplish these tasks. Modern development workflows depend on fast and accurate code navigation...

You can prevent the item from becoming hot-tracked.

azd now supports direct deployments to Azure App Service slots—quick, clear, and slot-aware for the first time.

In the first post of this series, we introduced how Azure Advisor helps Azure Cosmos DB users uncover opportunities to optimize efficiency and make smarter decisions. This follow-up dives deeper into one of the most important categories of guidance: performance. If you've ever dealt...

Find out about the new features in .NET 11 Preview 1 across the .NET runtime, SDK, libraries, ASP.NET Core, Blazor, C#, .NET MAUI, and more!

We are releasing patches for our self‑hosted product, Azure DevOps Server. We strongly recommend that all customers stay on the latest, most secure version of Azure DevOps Server. The latest release, Azure DevOps Server, is available from the download page. To make it easier to find...

A recap of the latest servicing updates for .NET and .NET Framework for February 2026.

The Vercel AI SDK is an open-source TypeScript toolkit that provides the core building blocks for integrating AI into any JavaScript application. It works with 20+ AI providers out of the box—including OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, and more—so you can write your...

The HLSL team is excited to announce the formation of Ecma Technical Committee 57; a committee to standardize the High Level Shading Language. The formation of this committee marks an important milestone in HLSL's development and strengthens Microsoft's commitment to HLSL as a...

Asking nicely, and asking a lot of people.

Introduction: A New Paradigm for AI Application Development In enterprise AI application development, we often face this dilemma: while cloud-based large language models are powerful, issues such as data privacy, network latency, and cost control make many scenarios difficult to...

Applications often need to know what data looked like before. Who changed it, when it changed, and what the previous values were. Rebuilding that history in application code is tedious and error prone. This is especially valuable when exposing a database to an AI agent through MCP servers...