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Developer Blogs

Azure MCP Server is now available as an MCP Bundle (.mcpb), enabling one-click installation into Claude Desktop and other MCP-compatible clients.

When people talk about building AI agents, they usually focus on models, tools, and prompts. In practice, one of the most important architectural decisions is much simpler: where does the conversation history live? Imagine a user asks your agent a complex question, clicks “try...

But maybe it's not worth it.

On March 31, 2026, malicious versions of the widely used JavaScript HTTP client library Axios were briefly published to the npm registry as part of a supply chain attack. The affected versions — 1.14.1 and 0.30.4 — included a hidden malicious dependency that executed during...

Ubuntu 26.04 (Resolute Raccoon) ships today with .NET 10. Here's how to install .NET 10 from the archive, use the new -resolute container tags, build Native AOT apps, and install .NET 8 and 9 from the dotnet-backports PPA.

Want to build AI agents with JavaScript that go beyond basic chat completions? Agents that reason, call tools, and pull from knowledge bases on their own? We put together a free, open source course to help you get there. LangChain.js for Beginners is 8 chapters and 70+ runnable...

We’re excited to announce the General Availability (GA) of Single Sign-On (SSO) from Native Apps to Embedded Web Views for Microsoft Entra External ID (EEID) Native Authentication. This release marks a major milestone in delivering end-to-end seamless authentication experiences for...

Modern AI agents often aren't bottlenecked by model quality, they are bottlenecked by orchestration overhead. When an agent chains together many small tool calls, each step typically requires a new model turn, driving up latency and token usage. With CodeAct support in Agent...

Inadvertently destroying a staircase while standing on it.

Key insights from the EDA and Ground Truth journey for solving well identity resolution in the Energy industry—challenges that extend to any entity matching problem across distributed systems.

The 2026 ISO C++ developer survey is now open: 2026 Annual C++ Developer Survey "Lite" : Standard C++ It takes about 10 minutes and directly informs the standardization committee and tooling vendors so the C++ ecosystem can continue evolving the right way. Please share your feedback...

We recently brought C++ code understanding tools to GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio and VS Code. These tools provide precise, semantic understanding of your C++ code to GitHub Copilot using the same IntelliSense engine that powers code navigation in the IDE. Until now, these capabilities...

Learn what's new in Visual Studio Code 1.117 Read the full article

Hooks are one of the most popular features in azd, and now you can write them in Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, or .NET, not just Bash and PowerShell. What's new? The Azure Developer CLI (azd) hook system now supports four more languages beyond Bash and PowerShell. You can write hook...

AI apps and agentic workloads expose inefficiencies in your data layer faster than any previous generation of apps. You’re storing embeddings, serving low-latency retrieval, handling bursty traffic from chat and orchestration, and often operating across regions. Done right, Azure Cosmos...

Available in Public Preview Today   Toolbox is a new way to curate, configure, and reuse tools across all of your AI agents without rewiring them every time from Foundry.  Today, teams build agents across different frameworks and runtimes. Each agent often wires tools directly,...

When we launched Microsoft Agent Framework last October, we made a promise: building production-grade AI agents should feel as natural and structured as building any other software. Today, we’re delivering on that promise — with the v1.0 release of Microsoft Agent Framework and the...

Agents are already transforming how developers solve problems. Whether it's a coding agent that refactors your repo overnight, a research agent that synthesizes hundreds of documents into a brief, or an ops agent that monitors and remediates infrastructure — the pattern is clear....

With just a single improvement in the REST API of Azure DevOps, we achieved a massive reduction in CPU usage and execution time when managing Git policies: 2x less CPU and 10-15x faster execution! This change is already available to all users of Azure DevOps, and it's time to share a bit...

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is quickly becoming a common way for AI agents to discover and use tools. It provides a consistent interface to databases, APIs, file systems, and third-party services, which makes it easier to plug capabilities into agent workflows. However, MCP...

Windows App Development CLI v0.3 is here! This release brings some of our best features yet including a full run-and-debug experience outside Visual Studio and built-in UI Automation from the command line. With v0.3, we've unlocked a whole class of agentic and automation scenarios....

So-called "fractal page mapping".

We're excited to announce the public preview of the highly anticipated Actual Result (AR) feature for manual testing in Azure Test Plans! This feature has been one of the top requests of the community, and we're thrilled to make it available for you. Why use the Actual Result...

~1,900 lines of Python. Zero dependencies. Saves you an hour a day. GitHub → · pip install auto-memory Now give Copilot CLI enhanced context recall. Point it at deploy/install.md and let it cook. 🍳 Are you tired of using the slash /compact command every 10 min? The...

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

This post is the first in a 3-part series: Foundations (this post) Start shipping (context engineering, MCP servers, orchestration) App modernization (Java, .NET, PHP, microservices) Bookmark this post for quick reference as you start exploring Agentic DevOps. It will be...

The Agent-Ready Database: Security, Backup, and MCP Part 4 of 4 – The Multi-Model Database Series This is the final post in a four-part series on multi-model databases in SQL Server 2025 and Azure SQL - exploring how the optimizer, storage engine, and security layer treat each data...

We are releasing .NET 10.0.7 as an out-of-band security update to address CVE-2026-40372.

Today we are absolutely thrilled to announce the release of TypeScript 7.0 Beta! If you haven't been following TypeScript 7.0's development, this release is significant in that it is built on a completely new foundation. Over the past year, we have been porting the existing TypeScript...

Protecting sensitive data is a foundational requirement for modern applications. As organizations scale their use of Azure Cosmos DB across teams, environments, and workloads, controlling who can see sensitive information becomes increasingly important. Today, we are excited to...

Aspire 13.2 keeps the JavaScript story moving with Bun for Vite, more predictable containers, and small but meaningful fixes across debugging and builds.

Somehow xor became the most popular version.

This update brings a set of improvements and changes across both local and remote Azure DevOps MCP Servers. Here’s a summary of what’s changed. Query work items with WIQL We’ve introduced a new wit_query_by_wiql tool that enables users to construct and run work item WIQL queries....

The Azure Developer CLI (azd) now integrates with GitHub Copilot for AI-assisted project scaffolding and intelligent deployment error troubleshooting, helping you resolve common Azure errors like MissingSubscriptionRegistration, SkuNotAvailable, and StorageAccountAlreadyTaken without leaving the terminal.

The C# Dev Kit team replaced C++ Node.js addons with C# and Native AOT, removing a dependency on Python. This post walks through building a Node.js native addon entirely in C# using N-API, LibraryImport, and UnmanagedCallersOnly.

You still have to use aligned accesses, even though the pixels might not be aligned.

How to build an observable MCP Server with discoverable tools and agents.

Preallocating memory to avoid quadratic behavior.

Legacy codebases frequently contain hardcoded logic and complex build scripts that depend on specific filesystem structures, making them notoriously difficult to modernize in isolated environments. Docker Sandbox addresses this challenge through a bidirectional workspace sync that...

April 2026 brings three major Reinforcement Fine-Tuning updates: Global Training for o4-mini with lower per-token rates across 12+ regions, new GPT-4.1 model graders for richer reward signals, and a comprehensive RFT best practices guide to help you ship specialized models faster.

Aspire 13.2 brings detached mode to the CLI. Run your AppHost in the background, free your terminal, and let coding agents start, inspect, and manage your app without blocking.

In March 2026, developers came together at VS Live! Las Vegas for a full week of technical learning, hands-on exploration, and a lot of great conversations about where software development is headed next. From AI-assisted development to modern .NET, cloud-native apps, and developer...

Trespassing on system messages.

Learn what's new in Visual Studio Code 1.116 Read the full article

Azure MCP tools now ship built into Visual Studio 2022 — no extension required Azure MCP tools are now built into Visual Studio 2022 as part of the Azure development workload — no separate extension to find, install, or update. You can enable over 230 tools across 45 Azure services...

.NET MAUI 11 adds pin clustering to the Map control, automatically grouping nearby pins into cluster markers. Learn how to enable clustering, create separate clustering groups, and handle cluster taps on Android and iOS.

We’ve all been there: a bug report lands in your inbox with a title like "App crashes sometimes" and zero reproduction steps. Your morning, which was supposed to be spent building new features, is now a forensic investigation. You’re setting scattershot breakpoints, staring at...

We're shipping two major capabilities that change how security teams enable and act on application security in Azure DevOps: CodeQL default setup makes it possible to enable code scanning across your organization without configuring a single pipeline, and a new combined alerts experience...

Maybe it didn't really exit.

AI agents are quickly moving from experiments to production‑critical components of modern applications. But while many teams know how to build agents, far fewer are confident they’re hosting them on the right foundation. Most organizations start by deploying agents the same way...

Practices, Principles, and Strategic Direction Software delivery has entered a new phase. AI agents are no longer confined to autocomplete suggestions in the editor. They are opening pull requests, generating code across multiple files, proposing infrastructure changes, responding to...

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

Find out about the new features in .NET 11 Preview 3 across the .NET runtime, SDK, libraries, ASP.NET Core, .NET MAUI, C#, Entity Framework Core, container images, and more!

Update the Azure Developer CLI with a single command on any platform and switch release channels.

We are releasing patches for our self‑hosted product, Azure DevOps Server. We strongly recommend that all customers remain on the latest, most secure version to ensure optimal protection and reliability. The latest release of Azure DevOps Server is available from the download...

PostgreSQL is a powerful and hugely popular database engine, and it really comes alive across Microsoft developer platforms. You can build with PostgreSQL across Azure offerings, develop productively in Visual Studio Code with strong extensions and tooling, and connect your data to...

Aspire 13.2 brings MongoDB Entity Framework Core and Azure Data Lake Storage integrations, plus quality-of-life improvements to existing database clients.

Try out the final preview of MSVC Build Tools v14.51

Not a direct line to Bill Gates's office.

Taking advantage of special characteristics of the array.

Your agents can now draw on skills authored in three different ways – as files on disk, as inline C# code, or as encapsulated classes – and combine them freely in a single provider. Add built-in script execution support and a human-approval mechanism for script calls, and you have a...

Azure MCP Server 2.0 is now generally available, delivering first-class self-hosting, stronger security hardening, and a faster foundation for agentic workflows across Azure.

Waiting for the waiting thread to acknowledge the change.

This post announces the deprecation of MSI packaging beginning with PowerShell 7.7.

In Part 1 of this blog series set the stage for why platform engineering is being reshaped by agentic AI. (read it here) Basically we outline how instead of humans translating intent through layers of CLIs, SDKs, and bespoke workflows, capable agents can interpret natural-language...

We’re pleased to provide an update on C++23 support in the Microsoft C++ (MSVC) Build Tools. This blog post will cover the feature additions in MSVC Build Tools version 14.51, including C++23 language features, libraries, and ISO C++ Core Working Group (CWG) and Library Working Group...

March ships Foundry Agent Service GA with private networking, GPT-5.4 and GPT-5.4 Mini, Priority Processing, Phi-4 Reasoning Vision, SDK 2.0 GA across Python, JS/TS, Java, and .NET, Fireworks AI and NVIDIA Nemotron models, and third-party guardrails from Palo Alto and Zenity.

Ship local AI to millions of devices - fast, private on-device inference with no per-token costs.

Aspire 13.2 introduces isolated mode, letting you run multiple instances of the same AppHost in parallel without port conflicts. Learn how the --isolated flag solves development and testing workflows.

You can't, but you can cooperate with the other thread.

Learn what's new in Visual Studio Code 1.115 Read the full article

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

SQL MCP Server gives enterprises a secure, feature-rich way to enable agents to access data. This is accomplished without exposing the schema, risking consistency, or relying on fragile natural language parsing. SQL MCP Server is a feature of Data API builder, so deployments have a proven...

Learn how to connect your MCP server hosted on Azure Functions to Microsoft Foundry agents. This post covers authentication options and setup steps to give your AI agent access to custom MCP tools.

You can't, but you can arrange for the waiter to do it for you.

We’re excited to announce that the GitHub Copilot for Eclipse plugin is going open source under the MIT license and will be hosted on GitHub under the microsoft organization in the coming weeks. By open-sourcing the project, we’re inviting the community to contribute,...

Multi-agent systems demo beautifully. Putting them in front of real users is another story. In early prototypes, a terminal or a basic chat window is enough. But once agents start handing off to each other, pausing for approvals, or asking follow-up questions, those...

Build MCP tools with rich UI experiences using the new Fluent API for MCP Apps in the .NET isolated worker. Configure views, permissions, and security policies with just a few lines of code.

Agents bring rich, app powered UI experiences directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot chat, via MCP Apps or the OpenAI Apps SDK. Read about what customers and partners are building.

Introducing GitHub Copilot Modernization and diving into the assessment report as part of cloud modernization process

ASP.NET Core 2.3 will reach end of support on April 13, 2027. Learn what this means for your applications and how to upgrade to a modern supported version of .NET.

AI agents can write code but struggle to run and test it. Aspire gives your agent a codified app model to build, run, and observe your whole stack.

Azure Cosmos DB enables scalable AI-driven document processing, addressing one of the biggest barriers to operational scale in today’s enterprise AI landscape. Organizations continue to manage massive volumes of structured and unstructured content—contracts, regulatory filings,...

Reviewed by: Sumit Sarabhai If you've been writing SQL in Python, you already know the debate: positional parameters (?) or named parameters (%(name)s)? Some developers swear by the conciseness of positional. Others prefer the clarity of named. With mssql-python, you no longer...

Make Visual Studio floating windows work perfectly with PowerToys FancyZones. Flip one option to get independent windows, better snapping, and less friction.

The permanently ineligible list.

We've shipped a big round of updates to Agent Academy. Two new sections, a completely redone site experience, and more missions on the way. Here's what's changed. Quick recap for anyone new Agent Academy is a free, open-source curriculum for learning how to build agents with Microsoft...

After July 9, 2026, the Azure SDK for JavaScript will no longer support Node.js 20.x. Upgrade to an Active Node.js Long Term Support (LTS) version to stay secure and up-to-date.

Learn how to build and deploy MCP (Model Context Protocol) apps on Azure Functions using TypeScript. This guide covers MCP tools, resources, local development, and serverless deployment with a practical weather app example.

If the compiler is complaining about things you didn't write, find out who wrote them.

Today, we're thrilled to announce that Microsoft Agent Framework has reached version 1.0 for both .NET and Python. This is the production-ready release: stable APIs, and a commitment to long-term support. Whether you're building a single assistant or orchestrating a fleet of specialized...

File copying is not a fundamental operation, nor is it even detectable at the file system layer.

React Native Windows v0.82 is here, marking a major milestone: the legacy Paper architecture has been fully removed. All applications now run exclusively on the New Architecture (Fabric), and this release also unlocks XAML controls for community modules — so Windows apps can seamlessly...

C# 15 introduces union types — declare a closed set of case types with implicit conversions and exhaustive pattern matching. Try unions in preview today and see the broader exhaustiveness roadmap.

Aspire 13.2 ships aspire docs, a CLI for browsing, searching, and reading official aspire.dev docs from your terminal, with the same source of truth available to AI skills and automation.

Tempting but misleading.

Learn what's new in Visual Studio Code 1.114 Read the full article

The March 2026 release of the Python and Jupyter extensions for Visual Studio Code is now available. Keep on reading to learn more!

These updates include a security fix for OpenSSL packaging on Windows, parallel file installation for improved performance, and other improvements and bug fixes.

This post shares context on the delayed timing of the PowerShell 7.6 release, our learnings, and the changes the team has already begun making to improve release predictability and transparency.

We’re excited to announce the General Availability of Social Identity Provider (IdP) support for Native Authentication in Microsoft Entra External ID. This release enables developers to integrate popular social sign‑in options such as Google, Facebook, and Apple — into native and...

We introduced the Markdown editor in July 2025 to bring Markdown support to large text fields in work items. Since then, we’ve received valuable customer feedback highlighting challenges with the editing experience, particularly when switching in and out of edit mode. Many users found...

Vectors, Analytics, and the End of ETL Part 3 of 4 - The Multi-model Database Series In Part 1: The Polyglot Tax we laid out the fraud detection scenario: a transaction comes in, and before you approve or deny it you need five checks. Order history (relational). Device fingerprint...

Building enterprise solutions is shifting from writing code to directing AI agents. Instead of stitching together APIs, CLIs, and scripts, developers are increasingly describing intent and letting agents execute. For enterprise platforms like Dataverse, this creates a new requirement:...

Bookmarks in Visual Studio have always been a simple, reliable feature. Many developers use them regularly, and over the years we’ve heard consistent feedback from those users. Bookmarks were useful, but there were a few core gaps that kept them from being as effective and relevant as...

If you work in field engineering, you know the scenario. A customer is deploying AKS in a regulated environment. They hit an issue during node bootstrapping. They want to know exactly what happens when a node joins the cluster, which components run in which order, and whether the...

Part 3 of the Azure Skills Plugin series Previously: How to Install the Azure Plugin You've installed the Azure Skills Plugin. The Azure MCP server is running. You have a huge collection of tools and skills at your disposal. So, now what do you actually say to...

Aspire 13.2 brings powerful new dashboard features for exporting and importing telemetry, querying telemetry via API, and improved GenAI telemetry visualization.

This month's Visual Studio update gives you new ways to customize GitHub Copilot. Custom agents allow you to build specialized Copilot agents tailored to your team's workflow, backed by the tools and knowledge sources that matter to your project. Alongside that, agent skills bring...

It was going to be like that when I got here.

Run, invoke, and monitor AI agents locally or in Microsoft Foundry with the new azd AI agent extension commands. Plus GitHub Copilot-powered project setup, Container App Jobs deployment, local preflight validation, and configurable timeouts.

This post shows how to write Azure service-related unit tests with Docker using Spring Cloud Azure.

Why is this even a question?

You can steal them from your owner.

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

On 12/31/2026, we will begin restricting updates to sensitive properties on non-draft email messages (including subject, body, and recipients). Apps will need Mail-Advanced.ReadWrite (or .All / .Shared) with admin consent to continue modifying these fields. Review your current usage and update permissions now to avoid unexpected failures.

Aspire 13.2 enables TypeScript developers to define AppHosts directly in TypeScript, with the same streamlined Aspire application model.

Because it opted out.

A step-by-step guide to enable search in the semantic kernel agents using bing grounding in Azure Foundry AI Agent using A2A.

Learn what's new in Visual Studio Code 1.113 Read the full article

Today we released PIX 2603.25 which can be downloaded here. These releases include everything in the previous 2602.25 release, plus the following bug fixes: Fix capture layer issue corrupting tiled resources in some scenarios Fix debug layer error during capture in query heaps ...

The dialog box lets you change how it waits.

And the developers running Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI didn't notice... Status Page Says 'Operational.' Your Subagents Say Otherwise. If you're running autonomous agents in any serious capacity, you've experienced this: model provider outages aren't edge cases —...

SPFx is powering the future of Microsoft 365 with AI driven portals and deep integrations across SharePoint Teams and Viva. The March 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.

Microsoft Entra is a globally distributed service that provides identity and access management to millions of customers world-wide. To scale reliably and remain resilient during failures, Microsoft Entra uses an eventually consistent directory model. Key takeaway A successful write to...

A few months ago, I was talking with a developer who said something that stuck with me:  “I love building apps. I just don’t love rebuilding the same UI controls over and over again.”  That’s the reality for a lot of teams. You want to focus on your business logic,...

A very primitive version of recovery.

We recently released a step-by-step course from simple chat to AI agents using LangChain4j 👉http://aka.ms/LangChain4j-for-Beginners Now watch the new 6️⃣part Video series with tons of hands-on demos. Let's break down what you'll learn. Introduction to...

SQL code analysis has been part of the SSDT workflow for a long time. Before deploying a schema change, you could run a set of static analysis rules against your project to catch potential issues, things like missing primary keys, deprecated syntax, or objects that could break under...

We've talked about the human scale problem and what happens when infrastructure scales but understanding doesn't. If you've been following along, you know the thesis: our tools have outpaced our ability to operate them, and platform engineering is how we're fighting back. But here's...

Making schema changes often means jumping between tools. You write code in VS Code, then switch to a separate tool to deploy your changes : exporting a script, running it manually, or copy-pasting into a query editor. Either way, it pulls you out of your flow. With the latest updates to...

Announcement of Version 2 of Generative AI for Beginners .NET, a free course rebuilt for .NET 10 with Microsoft.Extensions.AI, updated RAG patterns, and new agent framework content across five structured lessons for building production-ready AI apps.

Deploy and monitor an AI agent on Microsoft Foundry using the Azure Developer CLI (azd). This tutorial covers infrastructure scaffolding with Bicep, one-command deployment, local development, and real-time log streaming—all from Visual Studio Code.

Today we are excited to announce the availability of TypeScript 6.0! If you are not familiar with TypeScript, it's a language that builds on JavaScript by adding syntax for types, which enables type-checking to catch errors, and provide rich editor tooling. You can learn more about...

Aspire 13.2 brings TypeScript AppHost authoring, an agent-native CLI, Foundry integration, and more.

After ten months using GitHub Copilot Coding Agent (CCA) in dotnet/runtime, the .NET team shares data-driven lessons on cloud-AI-assisted development.

You'll have to ask nicely.

To deliver new features faster and continue improving stability and performance, GitHub Copilot plugin will end support for JetBrains IDEs versions 2024.2 and 2024.3. By focusing on newer versions, we can bring you new capabilities more quickly and ensure a high-quality...

Wrapping things up.

Learn how custom-built AI agents are dramatically improving the .NET MAUI contribution workflow, reducing issue resolution time by 50-70% while increasing test coverage and code quality.

Earlier this week we release the public preview for our Azure DevOps MCP Server. Today we are excited to let you know that the Azure DevOps MCP Server is now available to use in Microsoft Foundry. For those who are new to Foundry, Microsoft Foundry is a unified platform for building and...

Reaching the modern day.

In this post we explore the evolution from Azure IoT Operations Data Processor Pipelines to Dataflows, why we adopted a hybrid strategy with custom Rust pods, and the architectural lessons we learned building event detection systems at the edge.

Learn what's new in Visual Studio Code 1.112 Read the full article

We all know this, even if we don't like to admit it: modern infrastructure can scale infinitely, but human understanding doesn't. We've all seen it happen - organizations going from managing dozens of servers to thousands of containers, from deploying weekly to deploying hundreds of...

We're excited to announce the General Availability of PowerShell 7.6, the next Long Term Support (LTS) release of PowerShell. PowerShell 7.6 is built on .NET 10 (LTS), continuing the alignment between PowerShell and the modern .NET platform. PowerShell 7.6 includes reliability...

New azd ai agent run and invoke commands let you start and test AI agents from your terminal—locally or in the cloud.

Authentication tokens exist to answer one question: is this caller authorized to do this? They are not intended to be a stable data interface, a schema you can depend on, or an input into application logic. If your application decodes tokens and reads claims from them, this is an...

Remember when we announced the Public Preview of DiskANN vector indexes back in November and mentioned that once you created the index, your table became read‑only? Yeah… about that... 😅 We shipped early because the demand for Vector search in SQL was overwhelming. We knew the...

Handling Long-Running Operations with Background Responses AI agents powered by reasoning models can take minutes to work through complex problems — deep research, multi-step analysis, lengthy content generation. In a traditional request-response pattern, that means your client sits...

The MSSQL extension for VS Code v1.41 continues to evolve, delivering features that make SQL development more integrated, more powerful, and more developer-friendly. In this release, we're introducing the Public Preview of Schema Designer with GitHub Copilot, Data API builder, and SQL...

Read how inline image attachments are handled when they’re programmatically added to a mail item's signature or body in Outlook on the web and the new Outlook for Windows

Double the size, double the fun.

Taming the Noisy Inbox: How I Used MCP to Automate Email and Teams Triage How the Model Context Protocol (MCP) turns your AI coding assistant into a workplace productivity engine — connecting Microsoft 365 data to your terminal workflow.   The Problem We All Share If you work...

Part 2 of the Azure Skills Plugin series Previously: Announcing the Azure Skills Plugin This post is all about getting you up and running. I won't go deep on capabilities, architecture or anything like that here - that's coming in future posts in this series. The goal is to...

We're back with a fresh PowerToys release – PowerToys 0.98! This month introduces the new Command Palette Dock, along with a refreshed Keyboard Manager experience and many other improvements across the utilities. You can grab the update by checking for updates in PowerToys or by...

Guest blog post on building a real time assistant using OpenAI Realtime API using .NET, F#, Microsoft.Extensions.AI and .NET MAUI.

We're excited to announce the Cursor plugin for Azure Cosmos DB bringing AI-powered database expertise, best practices guidance, and live database connectivity directly into your coding workflow. Whether you're designing a new data model, optimizing queries, or building a RAG...

Appeasing the invisible return address predictor.

When we released the local Azure DevOps MCP Server, it gave customers a way to connect Azure DevOps data with tools like Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code through GitHub Copilot Chat. The next step was to make this experience easier to get started with and to enable it for services...

The next-gen Foundry Agent Service is generally available today with end-to-end private networking, Voice Live integration, expanded MCP authentication, GA evaluations with continuous monitoring, and hosted agent deployments in six new Azure regions.

Back in July, we launched the Awesome GitHub Copilot Customizations repo with a simple goal: give the community a place to share custom instructions, prompts, and chat modes to customize the AI responses from GitHub Copilot. We were hoping for maybe one community contribution per...

The FOSSASIA Summit 2026 was an incredible gathering of developers, open-source contributors, startups, and technology enthusiasts from across the region. This year, Azure Cosmos DB and Azure DocumentDB were present at the summit with both technical sessions and a dedicated booth, giving...

Get the Inside Scoop on Visual Studio Subscriptions, Straight to Your Inbox  A few weeks ago I was talking with a Visual Studio Enterprise subscriber. Seasoned .NET developer. Ships production code. Knows his stack inside and out.  During the conversation I mentioned one of...

Doing the math backwards.

We’re excited to announce the general availability of private network support for Azure Cosmos DB mirroring in Microsoft Fabric, enabling customers to replicate operational data into Fabric from Azure Cosmos DB accounts secured with private endpoints or virtual networks while continuing...

We keep doing this thing where we solve a problem, celebrate the victory, then realize we've created three new problems we didn't even know existed. Remember when manually configuring servers was the bottleneck? So we built containers. Great! Now we're orchestrating thousands of them....

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. This patch addresses an...

New azd ai agent show and monitor commands help you diagnose hosted AI agent failures directly from the CLI.

Optimizing out the unnecessary probes comes with its own complexity.

Code-Defined Skills, Script Execution, and Approval for Agent Skills in Python When we introduced Agent Skills for Microsoft Agent Framework, you could package domain expertise as file-based skill directories and have agents discover and load them on demand. Now, the Python SDK takes...

Learn how VS Code uses AI across its own development workflow with GitHub Copilot agent mode, automated testing, and AI-powered code review. Read the full article

At GDC this year, we shared how machine learning is becoming foundational to real time graphics, and how DirectX is evolving to meet that shift across shader level and model level ML. ML is no longer a niche optimization or a postprocess trick. It’s increasingly embedded throughout the...

Java has powered some of the world’s most mission‑critical systems for decades and that’s a big part of why we’re excited to be back with the community at JavaOne 2026 (March 17–19 in Redwood City). At Microsoft, we get to work with Java teams every day: folks shipping at...

Agent harness is the layer where model reasoning connects to real execution: shell and filesystem access, approval flows, and context management across long-running sessions. With Agent Framework, these patterns can now be built consistently in both Python and .NET. In this post,...

On March 12th, 2026, the DirectX team and our hardware partners hosted DirectX: Bringing Console-Level GPU Developer Tools to Windows at GDC. We shared our dream of bringing console-level GPU developer tools to Windows, and today we are announcing a major step toward that goal...

See how the modernize-dotnet agent helps you assess apps, create upgrade plans, and modernize .NET projects from Visual Studio, VS Code, GitHub Copilot CLI, and GitHub.

An out-of-band release of .NET 10.0.5 to fix a critical debugger crash affecting macOS users with Visual Studio Code.

One of the weirdest calling conventions you'll see.

Today we announced the innovation we’re bringing in solving shader compilation for the ecosystem at our GDC Talk: Advanced Shader Delivery for Windows. Want to find out what this means for solving shader compilation for your title and customers? Read on! State of the Industry Long...

If you use build service identities like Project Collection Build Service to call Advanced Security APIs, the Advanced Security permission changes in Sprint 269 broke that. We restricted API access for build identities as a security improvement but failed to provide an early notice for...

Today we’re releasing the public preview of DirectStorage 1.4 and the initial public preview of the Game Asset Conditioning Library. Together, they introduce Zstandard (Zstd) compression as an option for game assets on Windows. This new support meets the needs of the gaming ecosystem,...

Join us for Azure Cosmos DB Conf 2026, a free global, virtual developer event focused on building modern applications with Azure Cosmos DB. Date: April 28, 2026 Time: 9:00 AM–2:00 PM PT Where: Streaming live on the Microsoft Developer YouTube channel, with additional...

Government agencies have an increased need for secure, verifiable, and compliant cloud environments that adhere to data sovereignty regulations, operate in a Zero Trust framework, and help reduce exposure to insider threats. Today, Microsoft marks a major milestone in secure cloud...

Don't take steps that are too large.

Find out about the new features in .NET 11 Preview 2 across the .NET runtime, SDK, libraries, ASP.NET Core, Blazor, C#, .NET MAUI, and more!

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

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.

Oh, this old thing?

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...

Learn what's new in Visual Studio Code 1.111 Read the full article

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,...

Explore agent orchestration, extensibility, and continuity in VS Code 1.110: lifecycle hooks, agent skills, session memory, and integrated browser tools. Read the full article

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 Multi-model Database Series A note on naming. Throughout this series, when we say "SQL Server 2025" we also mean Azure SQL. The multi-model 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 Multi-model 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...