Category Archives: AI
RAG and Microsoft Agent Framework Step By Step (2)
In a previous blog post I walked through a RAG example using Microsoft Agent Framework so that we could do a semantic search against our documents. However, Bruno Capuano (Microsoft) and I went over this for my latest video with … Continue reading
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Creating a Spec Kit Extension
Want to build an extension to Spec Kit? This comprehensive guide walks you through everything you need: a ready-to-drop extension layout, a complete extension.yml manifest, a slash-command file, a lifecycle hook that runs a C# helper, a full C# console … Continue reading
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Creating Spec Kit Presets Step-By-Step
This guide assumes you already understand what Spec Kit and presets are and focuses on the who/what/where/how of authoring, testing, and publishing a preset. The instructions are concrete and practical — including a minimal manifest example, the recommended folder layout, … Continue reading
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4 Solutions to Spec Kit Issues
Your design docs look different across teams. Some repos forget the QA gate. Integrations (Jira, CI) are half-baked and duplicated as bash scripts. Onboarding a new engineer requires five manual steps to wire the same set of templates, commands, and … Continue reading
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Prompts in MCP Servers
TL;DR Prompts allow you to manage the exact instructions your chat models receive and let apps pick those instructions at runtime. That’s the core value of “prompts” in the Model Context Protocol (MCP). MCP prompts let a server publish reusable, … Continue reading
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When Is the LLM Called?
When working with agents (e.g., in Microsoft Agent Framework) it is easy to be confused as to when the LLM is called. Since calling the LLM (and getting responses) costs money (in the form of expended tokens) it is important … Continue reading
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MCP and Microsoft Agent Framework
tl;dr
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RAG in Microsoft Agent Framework Step By Step
Adding RAG to Microsoft Agent Framework is both straightforward and confusing. OK, that makes no sense, but I’ve been struggling to understand all the steps. Here’s a first approximation, more to come in future posts (and I have a video … Continue reading
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Running Microsoft Agent Framework Locally
Run a full Microsoft Agent Framework (MAF) agent entirely on-device to eliminate round trips to the cloud, reduce latency, avoid egress costs, and keep sensitive data private. With Foundry Local you can run optimized local model variants (ONNX/WinML) and wire … Continue reading
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ChatClient v ResponsesClient in Microsoft Agent Framework
TL;DRUse the Responses client for new projects if you want the newest, richest hosted tools and structured outputs; use the Chat Completion client when you need maximum backward compatibility or are constrained to the Chat-completions API (for example, Go-only paths … Continue reading
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Memory in BlogWriter
BlogWriter uses the Responses API which can help with state maintenance. BlogWriter, however, implements important state (context) using a session object, and manages long-term memory by writing to a Cosmos Database. I’m reusing this image because (a) it is apt … Continue reading
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BlogWriter Architecture Part 1
In a previous blog post I promised to take apart the BlogWriter architecture and implementation. I thought today I’d start with the architecture. The original design was to have 4 agents:* BlogWriter (orchestrates the other agents)* Researcher (searches the web … Continue reading
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