Microsoft
Developer Blogs

Microsoft Agent Framework now integrates with the Claude Agent SDK, enabling you to build AI agents powered by Claude's full agentic capabilities. This integration brings together the Agent Framework's consistent agent abstraction with Claude's powerful features, including file editing,...

The case of "Bring your own SAFEARRAY."

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

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

In Episode 111 of Azure Cosmos DB TV, host Mark Brown is joined by Yohan Lasorsa to explore how developers can build agent-powered applications using a fully serverless architecture. This episode focuses on a practical, end-to-end example that demonstrates how transactional application...

Find a way to take ownership.

Introducing Dev Proxy v2.1 with configuration hot reload and stdio proxying

The User Configuration API is now available in the beta endpoint in Microsoft Graph. Use it to create, read, update, and delete user configuration objects in Exchange Online mail folders.

Modern infrastructure work is increasingly agent driven, but only if your AI actually understands the platform you’re deploying. This guide shows how to turn GitHub Copilot CLI into an Azure Cosmos DB aware infrastructure expert by loading the Azure Cosmos DB Agent Kit. In under a...

Learn how Microsoft.Extensions.AI provides a unified API for building intelligent .NET applications with any LLM provider - one interface, endless possibilities, with built-in middleware, telemetry, structured outputs and more.

SPFx is powering the future of Microsoft 365 with AI driven portals and deep integrations across SharePoint Teams and Viva. The January 2026 update shares new features and the roadmap for the next evolution built for the AI era. This is a transparent community driven journey that we shape together.

You have to use the original pointer, but even that won't be good enough.

With the launch of Visual Studio 2026, we announced a Private Preview of GitHub Copilot app modernization for C++, which reduces the cost of adopting the latest version of the MSVC Build Tools. We used the feedback we received from our many Private Preview participants to make...

We're excited to announce the latest 1.22 release of the CMake Tools extension for Visual Studio Code. This update brings a host of new additions, including project outline updates for filtering and bookmarking CMake targets in large CMake projects and expanded CTest support to customize...

Microsoft Agent Framework now integrates with the GitHub Copilot SDK, enabling you to build AI agents powered by GitHub Copilot. This integration brings together the Agent Framework's consistent agent abstraction with GitHub Copilot's capabilities, including function calling, streaming...

Productivity Improvements This month, we are bringing you a series of small yet long requested and popular features to let you better control and customize your editor. Fast scrolling: Hold down the Alt key while scrolling the mouse wheel to move quickly when reviewing code or...

The concerns when adding a feature to an existing API.

When developers hear "cloud" and "AI," their first thought is often about cost. "How much will this cost me to learn? Can I build something meaningful without racking up a surprise bill?"   Budget Bytes is a new series is designed to inspire developers to build affordable,...

Meet the .NET team at NDC London 2026 to explore the latest in .NET 10, Azure, and AI-powered development through sessions and 1:1 meetups.

We’re launching Evals for Agent Interop, a starter evaluation kit that provides curated scenarios and representative data that emulate real digital work, and an evaluation harness that organizations can use to self-run their agents across Microsoft 365 surfaces.

Two ways of preserving the data.

VS Code now supports MCP Apps, enabling AI agents to display interactive UIs for richer developer workflows. Read the full article

In Episode 110 of Azure Cosmos DB TV, host Mark Brown is joined by Sajeetharan Sinnathurai to explore how the Azure Cosmos DB MCP Toolkit is changing the way developers build, deploy, and scale AI agents using real application data. As agentic AI systems evolve, one challenge continues...

This week we shipped the GitHub Copilot SDK which takes the agent loop from the Copilot CLI and makes it easy to embed in other applications. We’ve been using, improving, and extending Copilot CLI for the last few months and it’s sparked new ideas about what it means to have the right...

You can wrap it in an IDisposable.

Learn how to streamline AI development by using Microsoft Devtunnels to connect local services with Azure Machine Learning evaluation pipelines, eliminating deployment delays while maintaining comprehensive cloud-based validation.

The Azure Cosmos DB Agent Kit is an open-source collection of skills that teaches your AI coding assistant (GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Gemini CLI) expert-level Azure Cosmos DB best practices. Install with one command, get production-ready guidance instantly. The Challenge Every...

It doesn't do much, but it saves typing.

Last year, we launched our new GitHub Copilot build performance capabilities in Private Preview. With help from our fantastic C++ community, we gathered insights and addressed key feedback. We’re happy to share that GitHub Copilot build performance for Windows is now in Public Preview....

Code will be generated, not written. Most enterprise AI workloads are net-new microservices. Modular, greenfield work. Perfect for coding agents. The catch? Out-of-the-box agents lack domain knowledge about your SDKs and patterns. But frontier LLMs are extraordinarily sample efficient....

You are replacing the window procedure, not the dialog procedure.

We're excited to announce that the Azure Performance Diagnostics Tool for Java is now available for preview as part of the Azure SRE Agent platform, bringing intelligent, automated Java performance diagnoses. Currently supporting Java workloads deployed to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)...

Today we released PIX version 2601.15, which can be downloaded here. This release includes everything in the previous 2509.25 release, plus: A new Intel plugin with many new features and improvements Many new Buffer Viewer and Buffer Formatter improvements Misc other bug fixes...

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

Dealing with emergencies.

PowerToys 0.97 is here! This release packs in a ton of improvements to Command Palette, introduces a brand-new mouse utility called CursorWrap, expands CLI support across several utilities, and includes plenty of other refinements. Get the update by checking for updates in PowerToys or...

We’re introducing a limited private preview that allows you to add additional fields as filters on backlog and Kanban boards. This long-requested feature helps teams tailor their views, focus on the work that matters most, and provide feedback as we iterate toward general availability.

An old flag from 16-bit Windows.

App developers require performance, stability, and cross-platform consistency such as fast startups, smooth UI, and seamless code sharing across Windows, Android, and iOS as these factors directly impact user experience, development efficiency, and business outcomes. High performance and...

We thought it was a good time to check in and highlight some of the work happening in Azure Repos. In this post, we’ve covered several recent improvements, along with a preview of features that are coming soon. To stay up to date, be sure to visit the Azure DevOps Roadmap. These...

The tab index number is an authoring concept, not a runtime concept.

Introduction  This post is Part 1 of the series Serverless Application Development with Azure Functions and Azure Cosmos DB, where we explore how to build end-to-end serverless applications using Azure Functions for compute and Azure Cosmos DB for storage. Together, these services...

This blog details how the Azure AI Evaluation SDK can be used to assess the performance of a small language model for function calling, such as Phi-4-mini-instruct, and view the results in Microsoft Foundry.

Today, we are excited to announce that GPT-5.2, Azure OpenAI’s newest frontier reasoning model, is available in Microsoft Azure for U.S. Government Secret and Top Secret cloud environments. This release marks another significant milestone in our mission to bring cutting edge AI...

The strings are an implementation detail.

We are excited to introduce Microsoft Entra PowerShell v1.2.0, a major update that delivers full support for Agent Identity Blueprints, expanded application configuration capabilities, and modernized invitation APIs aligned with Microsoft Graph models. This release consolidates...

Are you wasting time reviewing code for nits on code standards, project preferences, or important contribution guidelines? We know the pain. It’s all too easy for best practices and those tiny but critical team details to slip through the cracks, resulting in inconsistencies,...

Every production system has a story behind it. The scaling limit you didn’t expect. The data model that finally clicked. The tradeoff you had to make under real-world pressure. The solution that worked—and the lessons you’d pass on to the next team. Azure Cosmos DB Conf...

How we built docfind, a high-performance client-side search engine using Rust and WebAssembly, and how GitHub Copilot accelerated development. Read the full article

Earlier this year, we launched Agent Academy: Recruit, a foundational learning path designed to help makers and developers get started with building agents in Copilot Studio. The response exceeded our expectations. Since launch, thousands of learners have worked through the Recruit...

If you build agents with the Copilot Studio extension for Visual Studio Code, you already know the fastest way to iterate is to treat your agent like software: version it, review changes, and promote it through environments with confidence. Today, the Microsoft Copilot Studio extension...

This blog post documents the transformation of the azure-search-openai-demo (a Python/TypeScript RAG application) through the addition of Aspire for local development and observability. It demonstrates how Aspire can enhance polyglot applications without requiring rewrites.

Finding all the clipping parents.

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

Finding the correct clipping parent.

Scenario: When Every Millisecond Counts in Gaming Imagine millions of players logging in at the exact moment a new game season launches. Leaderboards light up, achievements tally, and in-game shops buzz with transactions. In these high-stakes moments, speed and reliability aren’t...

Build interactive Android widgets with .NET MAUI using RemoteViews, intents, and shared data.

A deep dive into the technical challenges of keeping .NET's product repositories synchronized with our Virtual Monolithic Repository using a custom two-way algorithm.

Aspire 13 brings comprehensive JavaScript and TypeScript support to cloud-native development, enabling you to orchestrate Node.js applications, Vite frontends, and JavaScript services alongside your .NET projects with unified tooling and seamless integration.

Preventing the cursor from pointing to nothing.

Looking at child objects.

Learn what is new in the Visual Studio Code December 2025 Release (1.108). Read the full article

Scaling AI agent development with Aspire and Git worktrees by solving port conflicts through automatic port allocation scripts and an MCP proxy layer that enables parallel AI agents to orchestrate and debug complete distributed systems simultaneously.

It's old and rather simple, but we like simple.

How to read this article This article is a reflection based on hands-on experience and is written for engineers and technical leaders who are facing a new application modernization effort and want to build a realistic mental model before reaching for tools. If you are new to...

The MongoDB EF Core provider now supports Queryable Encryption and Vector Search. Learn how to encrypt sensitive data while querying it and build AI-powered semantic search applications directly with EF Core.

We are very excited to announce the public preview for private endpoint support for Azure Cosmos DB Mirroring with Microsoft Fabric mirroring. This feature allows you to preserve the enhanced network security on your data in Cosmos DB from virtual networks or private endpoints, allowing...

A hands‑on walkthrough of building MCP servers that can plug AI applications into Azure Cosmos DB The Model Context Protocol (MCP) has established itself as the ubiquitous standard for connecting AI applications to external systems. Since its release, there have...

You'll have go to a larger scope.

XAML Studio Open Sourced It's been over 8 years since what became XAML Studio was started. And from nearly the beginning, it was always envisioned as an open-source project… So, it's with great pleasure that I'm happy to announce that day has finally come! XAML Studio is now an...

Supporting re‑ranking has been one of the most common requests lately. While not always essential, it can be a valuable addition to a solution when you want to improve the precision of your results. Unfortunately, there isn’t a universal, standardized API for a “re‑rank” call...

The Cloud at Hyperscale: ARM’s Mission and Growth Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is the backbone of Azure’s resource provisioning and management, orchestrating billions of daily requests from customers around the globe. ARM manages all resources for Azure: VMs, Storage, Databases,...

Could do with a little less rotating.

A practical introduction to modern AI for .NET developers.

Applying the rotation trick to our new problem.

I always enjoy the quiet stretch between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s one of the few moments in the year when things slow down just enough to reflect on what actually resonated. While many of us were unplugging, our digital team was doing the opposite, editing and publishing 19...

A different algorithm, employing a different kind of cleverness.

A variation on the constant-memory rotation.

A breakthrough year for modernization, AI‑assisted development, Agentic AI development, and platform innovation 2025 was one of the most significant years yet for Java at Microsoft. From the arrival of OpenJDK 25 as the newest Long‑Term Support (LTS) release, to AI‑powered...

Let's take a look back at the amazing .NET videos, events, and live streams from 2025!

Another year gets relegated to history.

The recurring problem of synchronous resumption.

Let's look back at the most-read .NET blog posts published in 2025, from .NET 10 to AI, performance, and developer tooling.

Choosing the color-key and other brief discussions.

You can register for a memory notification.

You have to find new ways of going faster.

The struggle for null termination.

Understanding the difference between keys and characters for accelerators.

So transfer them to his office, or so it seems.

SPFx is powering the future of Microsoft 365. From AI-driven portals to seamless integrations across SharePoint, Teams and Viva, SPFx is driving innovation at scale. This monthly blog series kicks off our journey into the next evolution - transparent, community-driven, and built for the AI era. Let’s shape what’s next, together.

I struggled to get started. For ages, I kept putting off building this website, creating a new programming language for Visual Studio, and coming up with fresh color themes. Each project looked overwhelming, and I couldn’t find the time or motivation to jump in. It all just felt like...

The destructor serves as the "finally".

Delivering high-quality software requires clarity, speed, and collaboration. That’s why we introduced the New Test Run Hub in Azure Test Plans. A modern, streamlined experience designed to make test execution and analysis fast and intuitive. And we’re excited to announce that this...

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

Security vulnerabilities don't fix themselves. Someone needs to track them, prioritize them, and actually ship the fix. If you've ever tried to manage security alerts alongside your regular sprint work, though, you know the friction: you're looking at an alert in one tab, switching to...

It's a placeholder because the shortcut is to an MSI application.

Azure AI Foundry is now Microsoft Foundry. Read the latest announcements about agents, models, tools and more.

1. Introduction AI coding agents/assistants such as GitHub Copilot have become common in modern software engineering workflows. Their strengths—rapid pattern completion, context-aware suggestions, and the ability to learn style from local code—stem from broad training on large...

Stick to Unicode and you'll be fine.

Introduction to a scaleable and secure turnkey architecture for deploying Copilots connected to Azure AI Search.

Connecting the Dots: How Graph Databases Drive Innovation In today’s data-rich world, organizations face challenges that go beyond simple tables and rows. Whether it’s uncovering hidden relationships in social networks, detecting fraud, or powering recommendation engines, graph...

DirectX12 shipped in 2015 with a simple goal: give developers more control so games run faster, look better, and scale across Windows PC and console. Over the last decade, DirectX 12 delivered on that promise. We added features and made it easier for developers to focus on gameplay &...

Aspire 13.1 is here with CLI-based MCP for AI agents, dashboard improvements, Azure updates, and TLS termination support.

Working out the implications.

Email is a key part of how people get things done, whether it’s booking a reservation, confirming a package delivery, or managing a cab reservation. But as inboxes become increasingly cluttered, important transactional information often gets buried. Users are forced to open multiple...