AI Agents

VS Code agents are turning the editor into a control plane for delegated software work: plan a task, run it in an isolated session, review diffs, give feedback, and decide what merges. This VS Code agents guide explains the 2026 workflow without treating agents as magic or replacing engineering judgment. What Are VS Code Agents in 2026? VS Code agents are AI coding systems embedded in, or coordinated around, Visual Studio Code that can inspect a codebase, plan multi-step changes, edit files, run commands, and revise their work from feedback. In VS Code 1.115, Microsoft introduced the Visual Studio Code Agents preview companion app for Insiders, with parallel sessions, isolated worktrees, inline diffs, feedback, PR creation, and inherited VS Code customizations. That matters because agent work is no longer just a chat response pasted into an editor. A developer can delegate a scoped issue, monitor progress, review exact file changes, and keep merge authority. Stack Overflow’s 2025 survey reported that 84% of respondents use or plan to use AI tools in development, but useful agent adoption depends on controlled workflows, not novelty. The takeaway: VS Code agents are best understood as reviewable work sessions, not autocomplete with a bigger context window. ...

Microsoft ASSERT is an open-source agent evaluation framework that turns written AI policies, product requirements, and safety rules into executable tests. For developers, the value is practical: instead of debating whether an agent “mostly follows policy,” ASSERT gives you repeatable scenarios, metrics, traces, and scorecards you can run before release. What Is the Microsoft ASSERT Agent Evaluation Framework? Microsoft ASSERT is a requirement-driven evaluation harness for AI agents and LLM applications that converts natural-language specifications into executable evaluations. ASSERT stands for Adaptive Spec-driven Scoring for Evaluation and Regression Testing, and Microsoft describes it as open source and framework-agnostic for the estimated 6 million to 13 million generative AI developers working across today’s agent ecosystem. The framework starts with written intent, such as a product requirement, policy document, system prompt, or launch checklist, then helps generate scenarios, datasets, metrics, and scorecards that can be run against hosted models, Python callables, or traced agent systems. The key idea is simple: agent behavior should be tested against your own requirements, not only against generic benchmarks. ASSERT is best understood as policy-as-evaluation for teams that need repeatable evidence before deploying autonomous workflows. ...

Agent Control Specification ACS AI agent governance is a portable way to apply policy checks while an agent runs, not just before it starts. ACS defines standard intervention points, policy manifests, evidence inputs, and auditable verdicts so teams can govern tool use, approvals, data handling, and shutdown behavior across agent frameworks. What Is the Agent Control Specification (ACS)? Agent Control Specification is an open, vendor-neutral runtime governance standard for AI agents that defines where policy decisions happen and what evidence those decisions receive. Microsoft describes ACS as framework-independent, and its published model names eight intervention points, including pre_model_call, pre_tool_call, post_tool_call, and output. The practical idea is simple: instead of hiding safety rules inside prompts, SDK callbacks, or one-off middleware, ACS makes agent governance a portable contract. A host runtime supplies a snapshot of the agent state, tool metadata, annotations from evidence providers, and the policy target. A policy engine returns a verdict such as allow, warn, deny, or escalate. For developers, ACS is closest to policy-as-code for autonomous systems. The takeaway: ACS standardizes runtime control so security teams can review one governance model across many agent implementations. ...

Microsoft Open Trust Stack AI agent governance is Microsoft’s 2026 pattern for making agents testable, enforceable, and observable. The practical model is simple: use ASSERT before release, ACS during runtime, and OpenInference traces across both so engineering, security, and SRE teams can inspect the same evidence. What does Microsoft mean by the Open Trust Stack? Microsoft Open Trust Stack AI agent governance is a production governance approach announced at Build 2026 that combines two open-source projects, ASSERT and Agent Control Specification, with OpenInference telemetry. ASSERT means Adaptive Spec-driven Scoring for Evaluation and Regression Testing, while ACS defines portable runtime controls for agent behavior. Microsoft frames the audience as the 6 to 13 million generative AI developers building agents across frameworks such as LangChain, CrewAI, LiteLLM, and OpenAI. The stack is not a single hosted product or a replacement for secure application design. It is a lifecycle: evaluate agent behavior before release, enforce policies while the agent acts, and preserve trace evidence for debugging, audits, and regression analysis. The important takeaway is that governance becomes an engineering system, not a policy document. ...

Microsoft Foundry Agent Service Build 2026 is Microsoft’s production platform for running AI agents with managed hosting, memory, tool access, evaluations, and governance. The practical shift is that teams can keep their preferred agent framework while moving runtime, identity, observability, and policy controls into a managed Azure control plane. What Did Microsoft Announce for Foundry Agent Service at Build 2026? Microsoft Foundry Agent Service Build 2026 is a set of production agent capabilities around hosted runtimes, Toolboxes, managed Memory, Foundry IQ, evaluations, and governance controls. Microsoft positioned the service as the operating layer for enterprise agents, while Gartner predicts 40% of enterprise applications will include task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from less than 5% in 2025. The important developer news is not a single model endpoint. It is the packaging of agent execution, identity, lifecycle management, tool calling, long-term context, tracing, evaluation, and compliance into one managed service. Hosted agents let teams bring code from Microsoft Agent Framework, LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, Anthropic Agent SDK, GitHub Copilot SDK, or custom runtimes. Toolboxes and Memory move common platform concerns out of each application. The takeaway: Build 2026 made Foundry Agent Service look less like a demo builder and more like infrastructure for operating agents repeatedly. ...

Microsoft Work IQ APIs give developers a permission-aware way to build Microsoft 365 agents that reason over email, meetings, files, people, chats, and workflow context. For teams preparing for the June 16, 2026 GA release, the practical decision is how to use A2A, MCP, or REST without rebuilding Graph search and RAG plumbing from scratch. What Are Microsoft Work IQ APIs and What Changes on June 16, 2026? Microsoft Work IQ APIs are agent-oriented Microsoft 365 APIs that expose synthesized work context through A2A, MCP, and REST endpoints instead of forcing developers to manually join mail, calendar, chat, file, and people signals. Microsoft announced on June 2, 2026 that Work IQ APIs are scheduled for general availability on June 16, 2026, with GA endpoints for Agent-to-Agent, a redesigned remote MCP server, and REST API access. The important change is not just another endpoint family; it is a production contract for enterprise agents that need permission-trimmed business context, admin controls, and consumption billing. Existing Microsoft 365 governance remains part of the access model, while developers get a higher-level surface for agent workflows. The takeaway is that Work IQ should be evaluated as a context and action layer for Microsoft 365 agents, not as a simple Microsoft Graph replacement. ...

Windows Intelligent Terminal is Microsoft’s experimental AI-assisted fork of Windows Terminal for developers who want an agent to understand shell context, diagnose errors, and help manage command-line work. Treat the 0.1 release as a preview: useful for testing agentic workflows, not a replacement for your stable terminal. What Is Windows Intelligent Terminal? Windows Intelligent Terminal is an experimental fork of Windows Terminal that adds an AI agent layer directly into the command-line environment. Microsoft announced Intelligent Terminal 0.1 as a preview rather than a stable replacement, and Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey shows why the surface matters: 46.9% of professional developers still use Windows at work. The important shift is not prettier autocomplete. The terminal can expose shell-aware context to an agent, including recent commands, command output, failed builds, running processes, and workspace state. That gives the assistant a better starting point than a generic chatbot receiving pasted errors. Because it is a fork, existing Windows Terminal concepts still matter: profiles, tabs, panes, PowerShell, WSL, command palette actions, and settings remain the mental model. The takeaway: Windows Intelligent Terminal is best understood as a preview of an agentic terminal, not a finished enterprise terminal product. ...

The best multi-agent framework in 2026 depends on your main failure mode: choose LangGraph for explicit state and recovery, CrewAI for fast role-based workflows, Google ADK for GCP and Gemini-native systems, Strands Agents for AWS-oriented production agents, and Agno for runtime APIs, governance, and operational control. Which Multi-Agent Framework Should You Pick in 2026? A multi agent framework comparison 2026 should start with fit, not hype: LangGraph 1.2.4, CrewAI 1.14.7, Google ADK 2.2.0, Strands Agents 1.43.0, and Agno 2.6.13 solve different production problems. LangGraph is the best default when failures must resume from checkpoints and branches must be explicit. CrewAI is the fastest path when the work maps cleanly to roles such as researcher, analyst, reviewer, and writer. Google ADK is strongest when your platform decision is already GCP, Gemini, and Google enterprise deployment. Strands Agents fits teams building model-driven agents with AWS-style production expectations and OpenTelemetry traces. Agno fits teams that need AgentOS APIs, sessions, tracing, scheduling, RBAC, and audit logs around agents. The clear takeaway: pick the framework whose control model matches the way your system fails. ...

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore is AWS’s production platform for deploying, securing, observing, and governing AI agents built with frameworks such as LangGraph, CrewAI, LlamaIndex, and Strands Agents. Use it when your agent needs managed runtime isolation, enterprise identity, tool governance, memory, evaluation, and AWS-native operations instead of another prototype server. What Is Amazon Bedrock AgentCore? Amazon Bedrock AgentCore is a managed AWS platform for taking code-first AI agents from local development to production operations with runtime hosting, memory, identity, tool access, observability, policy, browser automation, and code execution. AWS made AgentCore generally available on October 13, 2025, and GA added VPC, AWS PrivateLink, AWS CloudFormation, and resource tagging across its services. The important detail is that AgentCore is not a new prompt format or a single agent framework. It is the production control plane around agents you already build with frameworks such as LangGraph, CrewAI, LlamaIndex, and Strands Agents, and it can work with different foundation models. The platform matters because production agents fail in places demos ignore: credentials, network boundaries, tool authorization, memory drift, tracing, replay, cost, and incident response. The takeaway: Amazon Bedrock AgentCore is the AWS operations layer for serious agent deployments. ...

The google adk a2a protocol pairing gives developers a practical way to build agents in Google ADK while exposing them through the open Agent2Agent protocol. Use ADK for agent logic, workflows, tools, and state; use A2A when those agents need to collaborate across frameworks, clouds, services, or organizational boundaries. What Do Google ADK and A2A Solve Together? Google ADK and A2A solve different parts of the same multi-agent system: ADK builds and runs the agent, while A2A lets that agent communicate with other agents through a shared protocol. Google announced ADK Python v1.0.0 as production-ready at Google I/O 2025, and ADK Python v2.2.0 was the latest release in the research brief dated June 12, 2026. A2A moved from a Google-led protocol into an open standard hosted by the Linux Foundation, with more than 150 supporting organizations announced on April 9, 2026. The practical result is a cleaner boundary: teams can use ADK for prompts, tools, graph workflows, memory, and orchestration, then publish selected capabilities through A2A Agent Cards, tasks, messages, and artifacts. The takeaway is simple: ADK is your implementation framework, and A2A is your interoperability contract. ...