Building Blocks for AI Part 3
The Microsoft Agent Framework (1.0 release, April 2026) is a .NET SDK for building intelligent AI agents. Built on top of IChatClient from Microsoft Extensions for AI, it enables agents that can use tools, maintain multi-turn conversation sessions, persist memory across sessions via AIContextProvider, and coordinate in graph-based workflows. Key patterns covered include: creating agents with AsAIAgent(), equipping them with tools via AIFunctionFactory, managing conversation state with AgentSession (including serialization), building cross-session memory, and orchestrating multi-agent workflows (sequential, concurrent, conditional routing, writer-critic feedback loops, and sub-workflows). Human-in-the-loop approval for sensitive tool calls is also supported. The framework integrates naturally with VectorData for RAG patterns and will be followed by a post on Model Context Protocol (MCP).
