Reasoning Effort for Foundry Agents

hi SamLS42​  This is a very relevant point when working with reasoning-capable models in Foundry.

For the data-plane models under Azure AI Foundry Models (for example the “o*” series reasoning models) the reasoning_effort parameter is documented. You can set it to values like low, medium, or high.

For example, the documentation says: “Reasoning models with reasoning_effort allow you to adjust the model’s cognitive load” (e.g., Grok 3 Mini model)

Reference sites:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/openai/how-to/reasoning?

https://ai.azure.com/catalog/models/grok-3-mini?

I couldn’t locate any official documentation that confirms that the Agents API supports the reasoning_effort parameter explicitly. The reference for the Agents service and quick-start articles don't mention it.

Therefore, the safe assumption is: No, you cannot currently set reasoning_effort via the Agents API endpoint — at least not publicly documented at this time.

Next ?

Microsoft’s public roadmap doesn’t show a guarantee of when (or whether) reasoning_effort will be exposed for the Agents API.

You may want to open a support ticket or flag this feature request via the Azure feedback forums to see if it is under design.

In the meantime: if you need control over reasoning depth, consider using the underlying model invocation (via Foundry Models or the OpenAI-style endpoint) where reasoning_effort is supported, then wrap that in your agent logic.