22 articles in this series
March 1, 2026 • Microsoft Agent Framework, Agents
Across this series, we have used several Microsoft Agent Framework client classes to talk to different model surfaces. This article maps them out, explains when each one fits, and shows the same simple agent built three different ways.
March 2, 2026 • Microsoft Agent Framework, Agents, Tools
Function tools turn ordinary Python functions into capabilities your agent can call. This article looks at how MAF converts type hints into schemas, what return types it accepts, how async tools work, and what happens when a tool raises an error.
March 4, 2026 • Microsoft Agent Framework, Agents
Real applications rarely call an agent once and walk away. They hold conversations, and they often stream the response as it is generated. This article looks at AgentSession, streaming responses, and how the two work together.
March 5, 2026 • Microsoft Agent Framework, Middleware, Production
MAF middleware lets you intercept agent runs, tool calls, and the underlying chat-client requests. This article looks at the three middleware types, when each one fires, and how to use them for logging, redaction, blocking, and result overrides without touching your agent code.
March 6, 2026 • Microsoft Agent Framework, Agents
Free-text replies are fragile to parse, especially when downstream code depends on the answer's shape. This article looks at how Microsoft Agent Framework constrains an agent's reply to a Pydantic model, when to use it, and how it interacts with tool calls and streaming.
March 8, 2026 • Microsoft Agent Framework, Tools, MCP
Function tools cover code you write yourself. MCP servers cover tools that other people write. This article looks at how to connect a Microsoft Agent Framework agent to a local MCP server, what the agent actually sees when you do, and how MCP tools coexist with the function tools we have already used.
March 9, 2026 • Microsoft Agent Framework, Tools, MCP, Foundry
Foundry can host the MCP connection on the agent's behalf. This article looks at how a hosted MCP tool differs from the local MCP setup we built last time, where authentication moves, and how to wire one up via FoundryChatClient.get_mcp_tool.
March 10, 2026 • Microsoft Agent Framework, Tools, MCP
We have spent the last two articles consuming MCP servers from a MAF agent. This one flips the picture: how to publish a MAF agent as an MCP server so that other agents and applications, in any framework, can call it as a tool.
March 15, 2026 • Microsoft Agent Framework, Agents, Memory
AgentSession keeps one conversation alive for as long as the Python process runs. Context providers let an agent remember things across sessions, across users, and across long timescales. This article looks at the provider abstraction, the built-in history and memory providers, and how to write your own.
March 16, 2026 • Microsoft Agent Framework, Workflows
Sequential, concurrent, handoff, group chat, and magentic workflows are all built on the same four primitives: executors, edges, events, and a superstep-based execution model. This article looks at those primitives directly, so you know what is happening underneath when you reach for an orchestration builder, and so you can build workflows the builders do not cover.