Before we dive into code, let's talk about
what Microsoft Agent Framework is.
Overall, it's a free, open-source NuGet package
from Microsoft to work with large language models
and to make it easier to interact with
them.
And also to switch between different providers so
you're not stuck with one provider.
It is similar to other frameworks like LangChain
and can be consumed either using C#
or Python.
In this course, we will focus on the
C Sharp version.
It is quite a new framework as it
released in preview in October 2025 and is
set to be generally available in Q1 of
2026.
Let's have a look at the overall components,
of which there are two.
The first, of course, given the name, is
the agents.
Agents are entities that are given prompts or
data as input, either from a user or
some kind of event, for example, a schedule
or a webhook.
It will then use tools in terms of
additional data retrieval tools to get more data
on the fly or use action-based tools,
example, placing an order in ERP system or
call an API endpoint.
Second smaller part of the framework is its
workflow component.
It consists of a workflow engine where you
can compose a sequence of predefined operations with
AI involved, or you can make it entirely
of agents and then it will become an
agentic workflow.
In this course, the agent part is the
main focus, but we will touch on the
workflow part at the end.
For a bit more context and dependencies, Agent
Framework is an evolution from a previous Microsoft
product called Semantic Kernel.
If you have heard about it and thinking,
what is the difference, you can sort of
see Agent Framework as a Semantic Kernel 2
.0 with more modern ways of working and
a much more advanced way of doing stuff.
Underneath Microsoft Agent Framework, we have the Microsoft
Extensions AI layer.
This is a much more lower level framework
from Microsoft as well, and it handles the
raw communication with the various LLM providers.
I've only listed a few of the providers
here, there's much more, and the framework can
in general work with literally everything as long
as it just supports the iChat client interface.