Category Archives: Essentials
Agentic Loops vs. Spec-Driven Development
There are a lot of new terms being tossed around the AI developer world. Two new ones are Agentic Loops and Spec-Driven Development. This blog post will endeavor to clarify… AI-driven software development today divides into two complementary but distinct … Continue reading
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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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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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1,500 posts
So far, this blog has published 1,500 posts.
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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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BlogWriter Goes Open-Source
Today I formally opened up my demo program BlogWriter as an open-source program. To do so, I added an MIT license and began taking contributions. Really that was about all there was to it, but it felt momentous.
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Important for programmers to remember
No one ever wanted a ⅛ inch drill bit. What they want is a ⅛ inch hole.
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Using Session State
My demo program is a multi-agent application that accepts a topic BlogAgent, researches that topic (ResearcherAgent) and then drafts a blog post (AuthorAgent). The post is then reviewed by another agent (ReviewerAgent) who either accepts the draft or sends it … Continue reading
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Microsoft Tenants
What is an Azure tenant (Microsoft Entra ID tenant) — and what is it used for? tl;drAn Azure tenant — now called a Microsoft Entra ID tenant — is a dedicated, isolated instance of Microsoft’s identity service that represents an … Continue reading
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Agent Skills 101
tl;drImagine an AI assistant in your company that can write emails, check expense reports, and run CI pipeline steps — but it has every capability baked into one giant prompt. It’s slow, expensive, brittle, and dangerously able to access systems … Continue reading
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