Introducing Microsoft Agent Framework: The Open-Source Engine for Agentic AI Apps
Introducing Microsoft Agent Framework: The Open-Source Engine for Agentic AI Apps | Azure AI Foundry Blog
“Over the last year, developers have been experimenting with AI agents in every imaginable form. Agents are not just chatbots or copilots — they are autonomous software components that can reason about goals, call tools and APIs, collaborate with other agents, and adapt dynamically. Whether it’s a retrieval agent for research, a coding agent embedded in a dev workflow, or a compliance agent ensuring policy enforcement, agents are becoming the next layer of application logic.
Yet despite the excitement, the path from prototype to production has been fraught with obstacles. Many of the most popular open-source frameworks are fragmented, each with their own APIs and abstractions. Local development rarely maps cleanly to cloud deployments. And most importantly, enterprise readiness is missing: observability, compliance hooks, security, and long-running durability are table stakes in OSS frameworks.
At Microsoft, we’ve had a front-row seat to this problem. With Semantic Kernel, we gave developers a stable SDK with connectors into enterprise systems, content moderation, and telemetry. With AutoGen, pioneered in Microsoft Research, we opened the door to experimental multi-agent orchestration patterns that inspired the community. Both had passionate users — but each had gaps…”