Browse All Posts (117)

Gaurav Bhardwaj shares a practical guide to keeping GitHub Copilot costs predictable under usage-based billing, focusing on token drivers, model selection, and workflow habits that reduce waste without giving up the benefits of AI-assisted development.

Allison announces a generally available GitHub rulesets option that lets you restrict which users, teams, and apps can dismiss pull request reviews, helping teams control when approvals can be cleared before merging.

Allison announces that the GitHub Copilot app is now available across all Copilot plans, enabling agent-driven development from a desktop app on macOS, Windows, and Linux, with support for signing in via GitHub or running sessions using your own model provider key.

Allison announces that the Copilot Billing Preview app will be retired on August 3, 2026, and points teams to GitHub’s built-in billing settings for tracking GitHub Copilot spend, budgets, and AI usage details.

Waldek Mastykarz tests whether replacing traditional CLI flags with a single --json payload actually helps AI agents, and finds the opposite: args are more reliable across models and shells, and dramatically cheaper in token cost due to fewer retries and fewer shell-escaping failures.

Sergey Menshykh announces the stable release of Agent Skills for .NET in Microsoft Agent Framework, describing an open format for packaging reusable domain expertise (instructions, resources, and scripts) that agents load on demand, plus the governance controls needed to run skills safely in production.

Andrew Lock explains how .NET 11 improves System.Diagnostics.Process output handling to avoid stdout/stderr deadlocks, and introduces new APIs for capturing text, lines, and bytes from child processes with simpler sync and async patterns.

YossiY introduces Log Analytics Export Job (public preview), a new Azure Monitor capability for exporting historical Log Analytics data to Azure Blob Storage using a KQL query and time range, producing gzip-compressed Parquet output and supporting resilient, retryable execution.

Nick Brady’s June 2026 digest covers the biggest Microsoft Foundry updates: Claude reaching general availability, new agent distribution into Microsoft 365 Copilot and Teams, and major improvements across Toolboxes, Routines, Memory, observability, and Foundry Local deployments.

hcamposu introduces Logic Apps Standard Local Functions and explains when workflow-scoped .NET code belongs inside the same Logic Apps project instead of being split into a separate Azure Functions app, with practical guidance on scenarios, runtime behavior, and deployment implications.

Sunita_AZ0708 documents a validated reference architecture for running Siemens Teamcenter on Azure Virtual Machines while using Oracle Exadata Database Service (Oracle Database@Azure) for the database tier, including identity integration, private cross-cloud networking, backup/recovery validation, and performance test results.

Visual Studio Code introduces VS Code Learn, a hands-on learning hub with short videos, guided exercises, and practical examples aimed at helping developers get more out of the editor, including content that touches on AI, agents, and day-to-day developer productivity.

JowoMSFT recaps the top community questions from a Rayfin AMA, covering how Fabric Apps can combine analytics with operational workflows, connect to Fabric data sources and external systems, and support AI-driven experiences while keeping governance, authentication, and row-level security in place.

ArshadAliTMMBA introduces Fabric Runtime Release Channels in Microsoft Fabric, explaining how the new default and early access channels let teams validate Spark runtime changes ahead of time, reduce surprise production breakages, and track exactly what runtime and VHD version their workloads are running.

Microsoft Security Team summarizes five takeaways from Frost & Sullivan’s 2025 Frost Radar on CSPM, focusing on how posture management is shifting from periodic compliance checks to continuous, risk-based governance across CNAPP platforms, with implications for DevSecOps, SOC workflows, and multicloud environments.

rusteinberg explains how Microsoft Fabric sensitivity labels (defined in Microsoft Purview) can do more than enforce access control: they can also act as guidance signals for AI skills and agents, helping them choose the right data sources and avoid mixing sensitive and non-sensitive contexts in answers.

WSilveira’s July 2026 Logic Apps Aviators newsletter rounds up key Azure Integration Services updates and community posts, including the Logic Apps Standard move toward Azure Functions out-of-proc hosting for .NET 10, dynamic connection names, MCP server management in API Management, and agentic Logic Apps patterns.

John Edward explains how Azure’s “Agentic Agents” can support resilient cloud operations across migration planning, observability, and continuous optimization. The article focuses on turning telemetry into actionable guidance, reducing alert fatigue, improving root-cause analysis, and driving cost, performance, security, and sustainability improvements in Azure environments.

John Savill recaps the major Microsoft AI updates from June 2026, spanning new model availability on Azure, Azure AI Foundry capabilities (agents, evaluations, tracing, memory), and GitHub Copilot updates including a desktop app and an SDK.

EldertGrootenboer explains how to secure Azure Service Bus namespaces using layered controls—firewall rules, service endpoints, private endpoints, and Network Security Perimeter—then ties the network layer to identity with Entra ID and managed identities, including practical notes on geo-replication and DNS.

Waldek Mastykarz shares results from running 150 agent tasks comparing Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Sonnet 5 inside GitHub Copilot Chat in VS Code, showing how “cheaper per token” can still mean higher costs, higher variance, and worse output quality depending on the workload.

Connor Peet explains how VS Code’s Agent Host Protocol changes the way coding agents run and stay connected, moving beyond window-bound local agents to sessions that can persist, sync state across machines, and support remote, long-running workflows.

This week's ML roundup focuses on making Microsoft Fabric deployments more governable and production-ready, from delegated OneLake shortcuts that tighten zero-copy security across workspaces and tenants to new outbound access controls for Real-Time Intelligence (RTI). On the streaming side, Eventstream connectors picked up practical upgrades like private networking, Kafka and Service Bus support, and mTLS, while preview features point to broader CDC and IoT ingestion coverage. We also saw Fabric move further toward repeatable operations with a public data agent API, GA item recovery with REST restore, and an AI-assisted CLI path for migrating Synapse Spark and pipelines. Outside Fabric, SkillOpt and MCP-based SQL Server tooling both reinforce a shared lesson for agent builders: skills, tools, and permissions are the control plane that keeps agent behavior reliable and bounded.

This week in DevOps, the common thread was making operational change more repeatable, reviewable, and safer. Azure Chaos Studio introduced scenario-based Workspaces with reports tied to Azure Monitor signals, while Azure Monitor added Dynamic Thresholds for Prometheus and OpenTelemetry metric alerts to cut noise without relying on static thresholds. On the CI and governance side, GitHub tightened least-privilege defaults (including read-only cache tokens for untrusted triggers), reduced secret sprawl by letting Copilot CLI use GITHUB_TOKEN in Actions, and expanded enterprise security controls across secret scanning, license compliance rulesets, and upcoming Dependabot alert retention changes.

Welcome to this week's GitHub Copilot roundup, where the story is equal parts model churn and operational control. New model options landed (Claude Sonnet 5 and Kimi K2.7 Code GA, Claude Opus 4.8 fast mode preview) while GitHub signaled upcoming removals for Gemini 2.5 Pro and Gemini 3 Flash, making policy audits and fallback planning a practical admin task. In the IDE, Copilot keeps pushing into agent workflows with vision attachments, browser tools in VS Code, and JetBrains support via ACP, backed by better session UX and usage visibility. On the governance side, managed-settings.json, cost-center budgets, session streaming, and CLI/SDK credit limits make it easier to enforce guardrails while still letting teams use agents in editors, CI, and tool-driven workflows.

kinfey explains why “token economics” has become a core architecture concern for agentic AI systems, using GitHub Copilot’s shift to usage-based billing as a concrete framing. The post breaks down practical engineering techniques—compression, caching, routing, and short-term memory—and shows how to evaluate cost, quality, and reliability together.

Welcome to this week's .NET Roundup. Microsoft set a clear planning deadline with .NET 8 and .NET 9 ending support on November 10, 2026, pushing teams to budget upgrade work toward .NET 10 and revisit TargetFramework and dependency constraints. On the AI tooling side, the focus shifted from chat-based demos to repeatable workflows: MCP-powered build diagnostics in GitHub Actions, practical auditing and OpenTelemetry for agent governance, and patterns for building tools (Functions, search) with safer data access. We also saw platform-focused updates like SkiaSharp 4 for .NET MAUI, a C# preview feature for closed class hierarchies, Azure Blob client-side integrity checks reaching GA, and a useful warning about ambiguous routes when inheriting ASP.NET Core controllers.

Welcome to this week's Weekly AI Roundup, where the common thread is taking agentic AI from demos to operations: more automation, more guardrails, and more ways to prove what happened. Azure pushed reliability toward standardized, automatable determinations with its internal "Brain" system and scenario-first Chaos Studio Workspaces that can plug into Copilot and MCP. GitHub Copilot news focused on enterprise governance and spend controls (managed-settings.json, credit pools, session limits, and audit-grade agent session streaming) alongside rapid model lineup changes and the approaching GitHub Models shutdown. Across MCP, Foundry, Fabric, and IDEs, the story is clear: tool use is expanding (browser automation, vision inputs, CI diagnostics), so security, provenance, and repeatable evaluation need to expand with it.

Welcome to this week's Azure roundup, where reliability and agentic workloads got more concrete across the platform. Chaos Studio moved closer to repeatable resilience testing with Workspaces and scenario reports tied to Azure Monitor, while Azure Monitor added Dynamic Thresholds for Prometheus and OpenTelemetry to catch anomalies without constant retuning. On the agent side, updates ranged from the kars runtime on AKS and MCP tooling patterns on Azure Functions to new security guidance on tool description poisoning, with a consistent message: automation only works in production when identity, governance, and auditability come first.

Welcome to this week's Security roundup, where agent governance moved from design guidance to concrete tooling across Kubernetes, developer IDEs, and Microsoft Security. We look at kars and AGT patterns for isolating and auditing agent behavior, plus new mitigations for MCP risks like tool metadata poisoning and untrusted server connections. On the platform side, GitHub tightened CI and audit controls (read-only cache tokens, reduced PAT use, Copilot session streaming) and expanded secret scanning into a more operational model. We also cover integrity and egress controls in Azure and Fabric, and why resilience drills and a faster post-quantum timeline mean security planning needs to start earlier.

Justin Bettencourt summarizes the June 2026 Azure SDK releases, highlighting new generally available Python client libraries for Azure AI Transcription and Microsoft Planetary Computer Pro, plus initial beta releases for Java and Python management/client libraries, with links to full release notes across supported languages.

Authorised Territory demonstrates how to show LLM token usage in a .NET console app built with the .NET Agent Framework while running a local model via Ollama, focusing on making token consumption visible during agent execution.

The VS Code Team shares results from a two-week production experiment with OpenAI that tuned the GPT-5.5 system prompt used by the VS Code coding harness. It explains the prompt variants tested, the metrics used to judge quality vs speed/cost, and why the winning prompt became the new default.

Arpit_MSFT shows how to route Azure Service Health alerts to the right team automatically by using Azure Monitor Action Groups to trigger an Autonomous Agent Logic App, backed by a simple service-to-owner mapping (for example, a CSV in Azure Blob Storage) with a default fallback recipient.

John Edward explains how to get more out of Windows Terminal on Windows 11, focusing on practical workflow improvements like profiles, tabs, split panes, the command palette, and keyboard shortcuts, plus common setups for PowerShell, WSL, Git, and Azure CLI.

GitHub introduces GitHub Copilot code review “medium depth” reviews (public preview), showing how the higher-reasoning review mode can produce longer, more thorough pull request feedback for complex logic and security-sensitive changes, and how admins can enable it at the repository or organization level.

John Savill shares a short weekly roundup of Azure changes and announcements from 3rd July 2026, including VM restore point improvements, new blob integrity capabilities, storage migration updates, PostgreSQL tooling, Azure AI Foundry news (including Claude models), GitHub Copilot model updates, and quantum-safe security items.

Jack Tracey announces that Azure landing zone (ALZ) has moved from a community-led open-source initiative to an officially owned Microsoft product under the Azure Migrate team, while keeping the existing repos and consumption model unchanged for users.

Allison details three changes to the GitHub Copilot usage metrics API that improve reporting completeness for Copilot CLI activity, IDE identification, and AI credit attribution—helping orgs and enterprises get more reliable usage and consumption data from the REST API.

Allison announces the July 31, 2026 deprecation of Gemini 2.5 Pro and Gemini 3 Flash across GitHub Copilot experiences, and explains what Copilot Enterprise admins and teams need to change to keep using supported models.