Welcome to Microsoft Agent Framework!
Microsoft Agent Framework (MAF) is an open, multi-language framework for building production-grade AI agents and multi-agent workflows in .NET and Python.
Microsoft Agent Framework is built for teams taking agents from prototype to production. It provides a consistent foundation for building, orchestrating, and operating agent systems across Python, .NET and Go, while keeping architecture choices open as requirements evolve, and supports a broad ecosystem including Microsoft Foundry, Azure OpenAI, OpenAI, and the GitHub Copilot SDK, with samples and hosting patterns for both local development and cloud deployment.
[!NOTE]
For the Go SDK, including its documentation, samples, contribution guidance, and issue tracker, visit microsoft/agent-framework-go.
Is this the right framework for you?
MAF is a strong fit if you:
- are building agents and workflows you expect to run in production,
- need orchestration beyond a single prompt or stateless chat loop,
- want graph-based patterns such as sequential, concurrent, handoff, and group collaboration,
- care about durability, restartability, observability, governance, or human-in-the-loop control,
- need provider flexibility so your architecture can evolve without major rewrites.
Key Features
Explore new MAF capabilities and real implementation patterns on the official blog.
- Python and C#/.NET Support: Full framework support for both Python and C#/.NET implementations with consistent APIs
- Go Support: For the Go SDK, including its documentation, samples, contribution guidance, and issue tracker, visit microsoft/agent-framework-go.
- Multiple Agent Provider Support: Support for various LLM providers with more being added continuously
- Middleware: Flexible middleware system for request/response processing, exception handling, and custom pipelines
- Orchestration Patterns & Workflows: Build multi-agent systems with graph-based workflows supporting sequential, concurrent, handoff, and group collaboration patterns; includes checkpointing, streaming, human-in-the-loop, and time-travel
- Foundry Hosted Agents (new): Deploy and host your agents to Foundry-hosted infrastructure with just 2 additional lines of code
- Observability: Built-in OpenTelemetry integration for distributed tracing, monitoring, and debugging
Table of Contents
Getting Started
Installation
Python
pip install agent-framework
# This installs the standard package set; install `agent-framework-lab` separately for experimental modules.
# It may take a minute on first install on Windows.
.NET
dotnet add package Microsoft.Agents.AI
# For Foundry integration (used in the .NET quickstart below):
dotnet add package Microsoft.Agents.AI.Foundry
dotnet add package Azure.AI.Projects
dotnet add package Azure.Identity
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