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Agents tracked: 258 Downloads (7d): 219M up 6.1% GitHub stars: 5.5M VS Code installs: 148M Releases (7d): 293 Agent status: 2 with issues Updated Oct 7, 2026
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Microsoft Agent Framework changelog: what's new each month

Every stable Microsoft Agent Framework release summarised by month: the highlights, new features, improvements, fixes and anything you need to act on. 3 months covered; the current month updates daily.

October 2026 · so far

2 releases: 1.23.0 → 1.20.0

October brought significant enhancements to the Agent Framework across .NET and core components, including new vector-store connectors, native workflow hosting, and improved session and approval handling. Major dependency updates and breaking changes were introduced to support new capabilities.

Action needed
  • Tool changes between runs now handled differently; existing code may need adjustment.
  • Azure.AI.Projects upgraded to 3.0.0-beta.3, OpenAI to 2.14.0, and MEAI to 10.10.1.
  • Foundry hosting redesigned around request-scoped agent factories and persistent sessions; migration required for existing hosting implementations.
  • Session-backed local approvals now required; prior approval patterns no longer supported.

Highlights

  • Native DuckDB and SQL Server vector-store connectors now available for semantic search integration.
  • Foundry hosting redesigned around request-scoped agent factories and persistent sandbox-isolated sessions.
  • Native computer-use support added to Responses clients and Foundry project embeddings.
  • Response-stream gates and buffering introduced for better control over agent output.
  • Approval and MCP runtime context handling significantly hardened for improved security.

New

  • DuckDB and SQL Server native vector-store connectors for databases.
  • TypeSafe AI connector for type-safe agent integrations.
  • Native computer-use support in Responses clients.
  • Foundry project embeddings support.
  • Response-stream gates and buffering for output control.
  • Session-scoped file-access isolation for enhanced security.
  • AgentExecutor checkpoint-state TypedDict.
  • MongoDB agent RAG sample demonstrating document retrieval patterns.

Improved

  • Declarative workflow HTTP variables now handled correctly.
  • Workflow topology edge multiplicity comparison fixed.
  • External input messages now stored for better workflow tracking.
  • TextSearchProvider caller cancellation properly propagated.
  • Foundry client headers validated before transport.
  • Tool changes between runs better supported with breaking change handling.
  • Approval and MCP runtime context handling hardened.
  • Matched function results now treated as terminal in core workflows.

Fixed

  • Declarative workflow HTTP variables no longer cause errors.
  • Workflow topology edge multiplicity comparison issues resolved.
  • External input message storage in workflows.
  • Foundry client header validation preventing invalid requests.
  • TextSearchProvider cancellation propagation.
  • Approval binding failures now fail closed for security.

September 2026

5 releases: 1.17.0 → 1.22.0

September brought significant expansions to vector storage capabilities and workflow management, along with improved OpenAI SDK compatibility and new observability features. The month included several breaking changes to agent middleware and file access APIs.

Action needed
  • Agent middleware inputs reverted to sequence-only; agent-hooks core extra removed.
  • AgentFileStore line-numbering contract changed; fileaccessreadlines added.
  • Azure.AI.OpenAI dependency removed (.NET).

Highlights

  • New vector-store abstractions with implementations for Azure AI Search, Redis, MongoDB, Azure DocumentDB, and Azure Cosmos DB.
  • Added maximum-duration bounds and stop-reason signals to tool invocation loops for better control.
  • Support for OpenAI SDK 3.x while maintaining backward compatibility.
  • MCP Host-history conversion for persisted AG-UI conversations.
  • Aspire traces now displayed in the developer UI for enhanced observability.

New

  • Shared vector-store abstractions with portable filters and in-memory implementation.
  • Azure AI Search vector-store connector.
  • Redis HASH and JSON vector stores.
  • MongoDB alpha vector-store connector.
  • Azure DocumentDB alpha vector-store connector.
  • Azure Cosmos DB NoSQL vector-store implementation.
  • Stable names for built-in orchestration workflows with checkpoint type registration.
  • Sequential function call invocation option.

Improved

  • Mistral SDK migrated to official SDK for chat and embedding clients.
  • Agent middleware inputs restored to sequence-only mode with better performance.
  • Provider refusals now preserved as marked text across conversation history.
  • Function call approvals bound to stable occurrences while preserving legacy compatibility.
  • Mixed workflow invocation keyword arguments now supported.
  • CodeAct tool parameter schemas exposed with configurable compact or JSON descriptions.
  • Developer UI now supports emitmessagessnapshot configuration for suppressing terminal message snapshots.
  • Foundry hosting improved with explicit Agent Server or agent-owned model history selection.

Fixed

  • Race condition in workflow formula state.
  • Duplicated conversation replay issue in Foundry-hosted agents.
  • Delimiter value inspection before adding headers.
  • Multiple typos in architecture decision records.

August 2026

7 releases: 1.17.0 → 1.20.0

August brought significant enhancements across the Microsoft Agent Framework, including new AI provider integrations, workflow improvements, and foundational changes to support more resilient and flexible agent deployments. The month saw multiple releases focused on expanding platform capabilities and hardening production readiness.

Action needed
  • Renamed AgentIsolationKeyProvider (version 1.18.0).
  • Consolidated OpenTelemetry GenAI semantic-convention support with explicit message-event controls, requiring updates to observability configuration (version 1.15.0).

Highlights

  • Added native Mistral AI chat client support with streaming, tools, and structured output capabilities.
  • Introduced workflow checkpoint creation, resumption, and steering support for more resilient agent operations.
  • Expanded foundry-based hosting with provider-scoped state stores and session continuity features.
  • Added optional agent-generated UI support and improved streaming tool-call handling for better user interfaces.
  • Introduced configurable timeouts and enhanced OpenTelemetry configuration for better observability and control.

New

  • Mistral chat client with native support for chat, streaming, tools, structured output, and embeddings.
  • Experimental agent-hooks enforcement middleware for extensible interception contracts.
  • Workflow checkpoint creation and resume capabilities in Agent Framework UI.
  • BackgroundAgentsProvider.releasesession() method for safely cancelling work and releasing session runtime state.
  • Provider-based Foundry state stores for managing agent sessions, checkpoints, and function approvals.
  • Optional A2UI support for agent-generated interfaces with preserved streaming tool-call indices.
  • MiddlewareFailure as a first-class fatal signal for function middleware.
  • Mem0Sharp integration for in-memory storage in agent samples.

Improved

  • Declarative workflows now fail when an agent returns an error instead of continuing.
  • Tool-approval auto-approval loop is now bounded to prevent runaway approvals.
  • File skill discovery is hardened for better reliability.
  • Hosted agents now have a single source of conversation history.
  • Usage metrics are aggregated across looping agents and chat clients.
  • Foundry Hosted Agents now include steering, retry, and recovery support with long-running workflow samples.
  • Run continuity improved by avoiding emission of unchanged predictive state snapshots.
  • OpenTelemetry GenAI semantic-convention support consolidated around stable and experimental modes.

Fixed

  • Fixed handoff orchestration sample not responding to user input in .NET.
  • Fixed snakecase argument names in Harness file tool descriptions.
  • Fixed workflow checkpoints being mutatable outside storage implementations.
  • Preserved logprobs field in Responses API.
  • Preserved unmapped provider finish reasons in Anthropic and Mistral integrations.
  • Honored cancellation for Foundry-hosted workflow responses.

Summaries are written automatically from the official release notes (full changelog ↗); check the original notes before relying on a detail. Microsoft Agent Framework: pricing, features and alternatives · All changelogs