Browse All Posts (133)

James Montemagno introduces VS Code 1.131’s built-in dictation feature, showing how developers can speak directly into chat, editors, and the terminal without installing extensions, with an emphasis on privacy via on-device transcription and an optional AI cleanup step for more readable output.

Giles Odigwe announces the stable release of the GitHub Copilot Agent for Microsoft Agent Framework in .NET and Python, showing how to use Copilot’s coding harness (shell, file, URL, and MCP tools) with Agent Framework features like middleware, streaming, OpenTelemetry tracing, and human-in-the-loop approvals.

robece-msft continues the Microsoft Fabric Business Events series with guidance on designing business event schemas that downstream consumers can reliably interpret and act on in event-driven architectures.

Julia Muiruri explains how to turn a single, oversized AI-generated pull request into a clean stack of smaller PRs using GitHub stacked pull requests and the gh-stack CLI, with a practical example and reviewer-focused guidance for keeping CI and merge rules working across the whole stack.

Allison announces the retirement timeline for GitHub Spark on github.com, including key dates, what happens to existing deployed apps, and what builders need to do to keep editing their apps after shutdown. The post also explains the impact of the earlier GitHub Models retirement on Spark apps that call llm().

GitHub walks through the My work tab in the GitHub Copilot app, showing how to manage issues and pull requests across repositories with default and custom views, filters, and layout options, and how to start agent sessions directly from work items.

John Savill recaps major Microsoft AI updates from July 2026, including new and updated models, Azure AI Foundry changes, and GitHub Copilot feature additions such as new “harness” options, @-mentioning app agents, and browser tools for Copilot in VS Code.

Visual Studio Code shares a short tip on teaching GitHub Copilot your project-specific rules using custom instructions, as part of learning agentic development in VS Code.

sbaynes reports on PRISM2, a pathology foundation model from Microsoft Research and Paige (Tempus) that links tissue images with diagnostic language from real pathology reports, aiming to reduce the need to rebuild separate models for each cancer-detection task.

Allison announces new Dependabot configuration options that let you control the branch names created for dependency update pull requests, including prefixes, maximum length, separators, letter casing, and custom templates—useful for CI/CD naming constraints and for keeping monorepo branches easier to identify.

Allison announces a public preview feature in GitHub Code Quality that can generate a code coverage workflow with AI from repository settings, opening a pull request for review before you merge.

Allison summarizes the CodeQL 2.26.2 release for GitHub code scanning, including new language support (Swift 6.3.3 and Kotlin 2.4.10), query behavior changes that may surface more findings, and a breaking change affecting how query authors embed links in alert messages.

Andrew Lock explains the new CSRF protection in ASP.NET Core (.NET 11 preview 6) that uses Fetch Metadata HTTP headers instead of synchronizer tokens, including how the middleware decides to allow or deny requests and what changes (if any) app authors need to make.

Allison announces that GitHub Copilot cloud agent now lets you choose a reasoning level (for supported models) when starting a task, trading off deeper reasoning against higher token and credit consumption across paid Copilot plans.

Allison announces a GitHub Copilot Enterprise governance update that lets enterprise admins target managed settings to specific enterprise teams using itemized configuration files, so large orgs can scale guardrails while still letting teams tailor Copilot within defined boundaries.

GitHub shares a first look at GitHub Universe 2026, outlining what to expect from the event and how developers can get involved in the community opportunity announced for this year.

Ricardo M. Martins describes a reference Azure-based operations assistant that uses RAG over runbooks and gates any write action (like incident creation) behind explicit user confirmation, with practical notes on Azure AI Search ingestion pitfalls, identity boundaries, managed identity, and idempotency.

Visual Studio Code highlights that VS Code Dictation is now built in, showing how developers can speak to VS Code using the new voice dictation integration.

nzagorac-ms announces a preview feature for SQL database in Microsoft Fabric that streams row-level changes (inserts, updates, deletes) into Fabric Eventstream or Azure Event Hubs, enabling near-real-time pipelines that connect operational data to analytics workflows inside Fabric.

Allison announces a new GitHub Copilot capability: Copilot cloud agent automations can now be triggered by issue comments or pull request comments, enabling comment-driven workflows like generating documentation, investigating errors, and creating follow-up tasks.

.NET Team announces upcoming NuGet.org publishing security changes: new API keys will be capped at 30 days starting August 17, 2026, and older keys will expire on November 1, 2026. The post explains the supply-chain risk of long-lived secrets and recommends migrating to NuGet Trusted Publishing using OIDC.

Allison announces a GitHub update that lets users with the triage role create issues even when a repository restricts issue creation to collaborators only, making it easier for trusted contributors to help with intake and ongoing repository maintenance.

Allison announces general availability of GitLab-to-GitHub migrations using GitHub Enterprise Importer, including a self-serve GitHub CLI extension for single-repo and bulk migrations, plus options for staging migration archives in GitHub storage, AWS S3, or Azure Blob Storage.

Daniel Roth and Javier Calvarro Nelson tour what’s new for ASP.NET Core and Blazor in .NET 11 Preview 7, including Blazor output caching, QuickGrid virtualization improvements, and changes to Blazor Server circuit behavior.

Tzvia introduces Eventhouse in Microsoft Fabric and explains how it helps data engineers ingest, store, and analyze high-volume streaming event data in near real time, reducing the usual tuning and plumbing required for streaming workloads.

GitHub demonstrates how to clean up and submit stacked pull requests using the GitHub CLI stacked PRs extension, including inspecting PR layers, folding redundant commits, renaming layers, and submitting PRs for sequential review and merge on GitHub.

John Savill explains Azure Standard Service Endpoints, focusing on how Network Identifiers (NIDs) simplify and scale VNet-to-PaaS access, and how they work alongside Network Security Perimeter controls for securing inbound access to supported Azure services.

John Savill gives a quick overview of Azure’s new Standard service endpoints, focusing on what they are and why they matter for networking scenarios that connect VNets/subnets to Azure platform services.

John Edward explains Microsoft’s retirement of support for the Microsoft Entra SSO plug-ins used with self-hosted Atlassian Jira and Confluence (Server/Data Center), what “unsupported” means in practice, and the security and operational risks organizations should plan for after July 31, 2026.

John Edward breaks down what GitHub Copilot does (and doesn’t) send to the service, how training and retention settings vary by subscription, and the practical security risks teams should plan for when using AI-assisted coding in real projects.

This week's GitHub Copilot roundup focuses on model churn and tighter governance: Gemini deprecations forced admin action, while new default enablement and team-targeted model policies changed how access evolves over time. GitHub Models retired, pushing model operations toward Microsoft Foundry while Copilot stays the developer-facing layer for chat, agents, and review. On the product side, Grok 4.5 and MAI-Code-1-Flash add new tradeoffs around context, latency, and token efficiency, and client updates across VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, and the Copilot app make agent workflows easier to run at scale. We also cover the practical side of adoption, including expanded usage rollups, budget enforcement that can actually stop overages, and managed settings that extend to the Copilot app, cloud agent, and remote control.

This week's .NET roundup centers on MCP becoming a practical foundation for agent tooling, with the MCP C# SDK v2.0 and new Agent Framework hooks that let agents discover skills at runtime with clearer safety boundaries. Visual Studio and VS Code also pushed further into agent-driven workflows, from a Copilot Chat Agent preview to an MCP-backed MSBuild binlog analyzer that can explain failures and performance bottlenecks. On the engineering side, the focus shifted to reliable automation (a unit-test agent that validates tests end-to-end and traced multi-agent orchestration with OpenTelemetry) plus a solid web security refresher on Fetch Metadata headers for defense-in-depth CSRF protection.

This week's AI roundup centers on turning fast-moving model and agent ecosystems into something you can run in production: governed, observable, and cost-controlled. GitHub retired GitHub Models while Copilot continued rotating available models, pushing enterprises to tighten policy management, managed settings, and usage reporting. At the same time, MCP gained more standardized building blocks (including the MCP C# SDK v2.0 and broader IDE integrations), and Azure added more runtime control points through API Management's AI Gateway tier and new cost-management toolsets for agents.

This week in Azure, the focus shifted from AI prototypes to production agentic apps, with GPT-5.6 now GA in Microsoft Foundry, stronger Agent Service hosting and observability, and practical IDE support in the Foundry Toolkit for VS Code. FinOps and governance got more actionable too, as MCP toolsets exposed cost and pricing data to agents, and APIM patterns tightened real-time enforcement for BYOK and token controls. On the platform side, Azure API Management introduced an AI Gateway tier in preview, Azure Monitor logs moved closer to Fabric and OneLake via zero-copy style previews, and Terraform AzureRM provider 5.0 GA landed with upgrade-impacting changes. The thread running through everything is clearer operational controls (identity, telemetry, policy, and budgets) that help teams ship AI and cloud workloads with fewer surprises.

This week's Security roundup links attacker tradecraft with platform-side guardrails, starting with Microsoft's CaptiveCrunch reporting on Midnight Blizzard targeting travelers through captive portals and device code authentication abuse. On the supply chain front, npm and GitHub tightened automation paths with restrictions on bypass-2FA tokens, publish-time malware scanning, expanded malware advisories for Dependabot, and workflow runs that can be held for approval in public repos. Microsoft and Azure updates rounded out the week with identity and AI protections (including agentic SecOps and expanded external AI red teaming), plus concrete governance controls across Azure Policy, Fabric encryption, and data egress boundaries.

Pamela Fox shares the materials from the “Microsoft IQ Deep Dive with Python” livestream series, showing how to ground AI apps and agents using Web IQ, Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Foundry IQ via MCP endpoints, plus code samples, slides, and write-ups for building and deploying Python agents.

This week's ML roundup focuses on turning ML work into repeatable, production-friendly systems. Microsoft outlined an API-driven GeoAI pipeline for generating GIS-ready vector layers from Earth observation imagery using the MARS model, while Microsoft Research shared Echoverse, a set of stateful synthetic environments with database-grounded verifiers to make computer-use agent training and evaluation more reliable. On the data platform side, Fabric and OneLake updates emphasized zero-copy access to telemetry and open table formats, stronger governance and outbound controls, and more operable real-time and Spark foundations that feed analytics and ML workflows.

This week's DevOps roundup is anchored in supply chain hardening, with npm adding publish-time malware scanning, dual-use metadata requirements, and tighter 2FA enforcement that will change how automated releases behave. GitHub followed up with new guardrails in Actions and Dependabot, including approvals for suspicious workflow runs and broader malware advisory coverage to slow down common abuse paths. On the delivery side, stacked pull requests moved into public preview (and into the Copilot app), while Copilot governance expanded with MCP connections, enterprise managed settings, and clearer cost controls. We also cover practical platform work: Terraform AzureRM 5.0 GA, policy-driven Log Analytics retention, Azure APIM AI Gateway preview, and tooling updates that make agents easier to debug and safer to operate.

GitHub shows how to use voice prompting in the GitHub Copilot app to quickly turn a spoken “brain dump” into a usable text prompt, helping you get started faster when you’re not sure how to phrase what you want.

Allison announces upcoming GitHub Copilot model deprecations effective September 1, 2026, including the impacted Copilot experiences and the recommended replacement models. The post also calls out an exception for some annual individual subscribers and explains what Copilot Enterprise admins may need to change in model policies.