We are excited to announce that Semantic Kernel (SK) now has first-class support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — a standard created by Anthropic to enable models, tools, and agents to share context and capabilities seamlessly. With this release, SK can act as both an MCP host (client) and an MCP server, and you can leverage these capabili...

Announcing New Vector Stores: Faiss, SQL Server, and Pinecone We are thrilled to announce the availability of three new Vector Stores and Vector Store Record Collections: Faiss, SQL Server, and Pinecone. These new connectors will enable you to store and retrieve vector data efficiently, making it easier to work with your own data and data models...

Introducing Realtime Agents in Semantic Kernel for Python With release 1.23.0 of the Python version of Semantic Kernel we are introducing a new set of clients for interacting with the realtime multi-modal API's of OpenAI and Azure OpenAI. They provide a abstracted approach to connecting to those services, adding your tools and running apps that le...

We are thrilled to announce the General Availability (GA) of our Memory packages for .NET, Java, and Python! The Semantic Kernel team and our partners have been working hard to allow you to quickly connect to vector stores and make it easy for you to do embeddings and data retrieval between stores. Transforming Data Management with Vector Stores...

We are excited to announce the General Availability (GA) release of Filters for our .NET and Python Semantic Kernel! This vital enhancement strengthens the control and visibility developers have when running functions, ensuring responsible AI practices are instilled from the ground up. Filters not only improve security but also contribute to buildi...

We are thrilled to announce the release of the long-awaited Semantic Kernel Python SDK 1.0.0! This milestone version brings a plethora of enhancements and new features designed to empower AI and app developers with more robust and versatile tools. Exciting New Feature: Shared Prompts Across Languages One of the groundbreaking features of this rel...

We are excited to showcase a Semantic Kernel sample across all 3 languages: .NET, Python and Java! Today we’re going to dive into the Python version of the TimePlugin sample which is featured here. Prerequisites for the Azure OpenAI key or OpenAI key: As covered in our Python README.md or DEV_SETUP.md, Python leverages Pydantic settings. This...

Hi all, We’re looking forward to highlight a Python sample today focused on a Restaurant Bookings sample here. Booking Restaurant - Demo Application This sample provides a practical demonstration of how to leverage features from the Semantic Kernel to build a console application. Specifically, the application utilizes the Business Schedule...

As we approach a stable v1.0 version of the Python Semantic Kernel SDK, we analysed the methods used to add plugins and functions to the kernel. We realised that the variety of available methods might confuse developers. For instance, when should one use versus ? Or versus ? Our goal has always been to keep the SDK as Pythonic and simple as possi...

Hello to all Python enthusiasts working with Semantic Kernel! We are very happy to share some of the latest work we have been doing, namely we introduced not one but two new options for templates: Handlebars and Jinja2. And we also made some updates to the 'semantic-kernel' (default) template as well! This is all now available as of package version...