Unlock the Latest Agentic App Capabilities

The Ignite 2025 update delivers a major leap forward for the AI Toolkit extension pack in VS Code, introducing a unified, end-to-end environment for building, visualizing, and deploying agentic applications to Microsoft Foundry, and the addition of Anthropic’s frontier Claude models in the Model Catalog! This release enables developers to build and debug locally in VS Code, then deploy to the cloud with a single click. Seamlessly switch between VS Code and the Foundry portal for visualization, orchestration, and evaluation, creating a smooth roundtrip workflow that accelerates innovation and delivers a truly unified AI development experience. Download the http://aka.ms/aitoolkit today and start building next-generation agentic apps in VS Code!

What Can You Do with the AI Toolkit Extension Pack?

Access Anthropic models in the Model Catalog

Following the Microsoft, NVIDIA and Anthropic strategic partnerships announcement today, we are excited to share that Anthropic’s frontier Claude models including Claude Sonnet 4.5, Claude Opus 4.1, and Claude Haiku 4.5, are now integrated into the AI Toolkit, providing even more choices and flexibility when building intelligent applications and AI agents.

Build AI Agents Using GitHub Copilot

• Scaffold agent applications using best-practice patterns, tool-calling examples, tracing hooks, and test scaffolds, all powered by Copilot and aligned with the Microsoft Agent Framework.
• Generate agent code in Python or .NET, giving you flexibility to target your preferred runtime.

Build and Customize YAML Workflows

• Design YAML-based workflows in the Foundry portal, then continue editing and testing directly in VS Code.
• To customize your YAML-based workflows, instantly convert it to Agent Framework code using GitHub Copilot. Upgrade from declarative design to code-first customization without starting from scratch.

Visualize Multi-Agent Workflows

• Envision your code-based agent workflows with an interactive graph visualizer that reveals each component and how they connect
• Watch in real-time how each node lights up as you run your agent. Use the visualizer to understand and debug complex agent graphs, making iteration fast and intuitive.

Experiment, Debug, and Evaluate Locally

• Use the Hosted Agents Playground to quickly interact with your agents on your development machine.
• Leverage local tracing support to debug reasoning steps, tool calls, and latency hotspots—so you can quickly diagnose and fix issues.
• Define metrics, tasks, and datasets for agent evaluation, then implement metrics using the Foundry Evaluation SDK and orchestrate evaluations runs with the help of Copilot.

Seamless Integration Across Environments

• Jump from Foundry Portal to VS Code Web for a development environment in your preferred code editor setting.
• Open YAML workflows, playgrounds, and agent templates directly in VS Code for editing and deployment.

How to Get Started

• Install the AI Toolkit extension pack from the VS Code marketplace. Check out documentation.
• Get started with building workflows with Microsoft Foundry in VS Code
  • 1.    Work with Hosted (Pro-code) Agent workflows in VS Code
    2.    Work with Declarative (Low-code) Agent workflows in VS Code

Feedback & Support

Try out the extensions and let us know what you think! File issues or feedback on our GitHub repo for Foundry extension and AI Toolkit extension. Your input helps us make continuous improvements.