leoyao presents the latest features of the AI Toolkit Extension Pack for Visual Studio Code, showcasing new agentic app workflows, Copilot-driven development, and end-to-end cloud deployment released at Ignite 2025.

AI Toolkit Extension Pack for Visual Studio Code: Ignite 2025 Update

The Ignite 2025 update delivers a major leap forward for the AI Toolkit extension pack in VS Code. This release introduces a unified and efficient environment for building, visualizing, and deploying intelligent agentic applications. Developers can now:

Key Features and Capabilities

1. Build AI Agents Using GitHub Copilot

  • Scaffold agent applications with best-practice patterns and tool-calling examples.
  • Integrate tracing hooks and test scaffolds, powered by Copilot and aligned with the Microsoft Agent Framework.
  • Generate agent code using either Python or .NET, supporting multiple runtimes.

2. Design and Customize YAML Workflows

  • Author YAML-based workflows in the Foundry portal, with editing and testing capabilities in VS Code.
  • Instantly convert YAML workflows to Agent Framework code using GitHub Copilot for more customizable implementations.

3. Visualize Multi-Agent Workflows

  • Inspect agent workflow structure with an interactive graph visualizer.
  • Observe real-time updates as agents execute and debug complex graphs easily.

4. Experiment, Debug, and Evaluate Locally

  • Use the Hosted Agents Playground to interact with agents on your development machine.
  • Debug using local tracing support for reasoning steps, tool calls, and latency issues.
  • Define metrics, tasks, and datasets for evaluation using the Foundry Evaluation SDK, and orchestrate evaluation runs with Copilot assistance.

5. Seamless Integration Across Environments

  • Easily transition between the Foundry Portal and VS Code Web for a consistent development environment.
  • Open and manage YAML workflows, playgrounds, and templates in VS Code.

Getting Started

  • Install the AI Toolkit extension pack from the VS Code marketplace.
  • Install the Azure MCP server extension to use GitHub Copilot for interacting with Foundry resources.
  • Use the AI Toolkit and Foundry extension icons within VS Code for access to all major features.
  • Install the Foundry SDK and review additional documentation.

Feedback & Support

Submit any issues or feature requests to the GitHub repo for Foundry extension and AI Toolkit extension. Community feedback is encouraged to enhance these tools further.

Last updated: November 18, 2025 — Version 1.0, by leoyao

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