A lesson-by-lesson course through the Microsoft Agent Framework Go: agents, tools, workflows, memory, and production patterns, each with runnable Go code.
The zero-network preflight that confirms your Foundry config and Azure credential chain exist before you run a single agent.
A zero-network preflight that confirms your Foundry endpoint, model deployment, and Azure credential chain exist before you run a single agent.
The smallest useful agent: give a model instructions and a name, hand it a message, get a response — collected or streamed.
Build the smallest useful agent from instructions and a model, then run the same RunText call two ways — collected all at once and streamed token-by-token.
Hand the agent a plain Go function it can decide to call mid-conversation — the model requests it, the framework runs it, the result flows back.
Register a plain Go function as a tool with functool.MustNew; the model decides when to call it, the framework runs it, and the result flows back into the answer.
One Session threaded through every call turns two stateless one-shots into a single conversation that remembers.
Thread one agent.Session through every RunText call with agent.WithSession to turn stateless one-shots into a single conversation that remembers.
A custom ContextProvider gives the agent memory: it reads stored facts before a run and learns new ones after — all through the Session.
A custom ContextProvider wires Provide and Store hooks around every run so the agent reads remembered facts before the call and learns new ones after, all in the Session.
The other primitive: a directed graph of executors wired by edges, running fully offline with no model, no credential, no Foundry.
Wire two executors into an uppercase to reverse pipeline with the fluent workflow builder and run it fully offline via inproc.Default, iterating ExecutorCompletedEvents.
How to discover a remote A2A agent's advertised skills and hand each one to a local host agent as an ordinary function tool.
Resolve a remote A2A agent card, turn each advertised skill into a function tool with derived names and descriptions, and hand them to a local Foundry host agent.
How to drive a slow remote agent that answers with a continuation token, then poll that token to completion instead of blocking on one long call.
Ask a remote A2A agent with AllowBackgroundResponses, get a continuation token, and poll with WithContinuationToken and no messages until the token clears.
How to pin which transport a client uses when a remote A2A agent advertises several bindings at once.
Pin the transport an A2A client uses via PreferredTransports so binding negotiation is deterministic, while the wrapped remote agent stays a plain agent.Agent.
How to resume a long-running remote agent stream after it drops — using a continuation token to reconnect instead of re-sending the expensive query.
Capture the continuation token from a streamed remote run, then reconnect with WithContinuationToken and no messages to resume the same task to completion.
How to wrap every agent run with a middleware — the standard hook for logging, tracing, and guardrails.
Wrap every agent run with an agent.Middleware in the Foundry Go SDK: one pass-through function that observes messages and updates without altering the result.
How an agent.Session carries conversation history across RunText calls so the model remembers earlier turns.
Thread conversation history across RunText calls with an agent.Session and agent.WithSession, so a follow-up prompt builds on the previous turn; a new session starts fresh.
How to wrap a plain typed Go function as a tool the model can call mid-run.
Wrap a plain typed Go function with functool.MustNew and attach it via agent.Config.Tools so the model can call it; the SDK infers the JSON schema from the signature.
How to pause a run for human approval before the framework is allowed to execute a tool.
Wrap a tool with tool.ApprovalRequiredFunc so the run pauses and returns a ToolApprovalRequestContent; approve or decline, then resume with RunMessage on the same session.
How to make the agent return a typed Go struct instead of free-form prose, via a JSON schema derived from your type.
Two ways to get typed output from an agent: per-run agent.WithStructuredOutput, or agent.WithResponseFormat with jsonformat.MustFor baked into Config.RunOptions.
How to serialize an agent.Session to storage and resume the same conversation later, even from a new process.
Serialize an agent.Session with encoding/json, store the bytes, and reload them into a fresh Session in another process to resume the exact same conversation.
How to teach an agent to load and persist conversation memory in your own store via a custom history provider.
Implement a custom agent.HistoryProvider with Provide and Store hooks so the agent loads and persists history in your store; DisableStoreOutput keeps it the single source of truth.
How to turn every agent run into an OpenTelemetry span with the SDK's otelprovider middleware.
Wire otelprovider.NewMiddleware into agent.Config.Middlewares to open a gen_ai span around every run, exported to whatever TracerProvider you register globally.
How Go's constructor-over-an-interface idiom lets you inject a real Foundry agent into a service — and a fake into its test — through the same seam.
Inject a Foundry agent into a service through a two-method ChatAgent interface, so main injects the real agent and the test injects a fake through the same constructor.
How to publish an agent as a discoverable tool on a Model Context Protocol server so any MCP client can invoke it.
Wrap an agent with agenttool.New then register it with mcptool.AddTool to serve it over MCP on stdio, so any MCP client can discover and invoke it.
How one message can bundle a text prompt and an image, and why that forces RunMessage instead of the RunText shortcut.
Bundle a TextContent prompt and a base64 DataContent image into one message.Message and run it with RunMessage instead of the text-only RunText shortcut.
How wrapping one agent as a tool.Tool lets an orchestrator agent delegate to a specialist — composition all the way down, with no routing code.
Wrap a specialist agent with agenttool.New so an orchestrator calls it like any tool, cascading two levels deep from orchestrator to weather agent to leaf function.
How a ContextProvider injects extra messages and tools into every run — a live todo list and calendar — with state that survives serialize and resume.
A ContextProvider injects a live todo list and calendar into each run and contributes session-mutating tools, with state that serializes to JSON and resumes.
How to keep a long-running conversation inside the context window by chaining compaction strategies from gentle to aggressive.
Chain four compaction strategies from tool-result collapse to summarization to sliding window to truncation, each gated by a trigger and a preservation floor.
How a real shell tool lets the model run commands, and an environment provider tells it which shell it is driving.
Pair a run_shell tool with an EnvironmentProvider that probes the shell once and injects OS-correct idioms, contrasting stateless and persistent shell modes.
How a memory ContextProvider backed by an Azure AI Foundry store lets an agent recall you in a brand-new session.
Attach a Foundry-backed memory ContextProvider that retrieves before and stores after each run, so a fresh session still recalls facts keyed by a scope.
How to take the same Foundry agent from earlier lessons and serve it over the AG-UI protocol so a separate client can drive it over HTTP+SSE.
Serve an unchanged Foundry agent over the AG-UI protocol with one aguiprovider.NewJSONHTTPHandler call, then drive it from a credential-free SSE client.
How an AG-UI-hosted agent runs a server-side function tool while the thin client just streams the conversation.
Give an AG-UI-hosted agent a server-side search_restaurants tool via functool while the thin SSE client just streams the reply — the tool round-trip stays invisible.
How the server-hosted agent can call a tool that actually runs on the client, and the one flag that makes it work.
Let a server-hosted agent call a client-side tool over AG-UI — the server sets DisableFuncAutoCall and forwards the call to the client, which runs the Go function locally.
How an approval-required tool makes the server pause a run and wait for a human on the client to say yes or no.
Gate a tool behind tool.ApprovalRequiredFunc so the AG-UI server pauses the run, then answer the approval from the client with a message round-trip loop.
How a shared state snapshot rides along with every AG-UI turn, so client and server-hosted agent stay in sync on evolving structured data.
Share a JSON state snapshot across AG-UI turns — server middleware emits a DataContent snapshot from the model's JSON and the client adopts it via toStateContent and extractState.
How to borrow tools from a remote Model Context Protocol server and hand them to a Foundry agent as ordinary tools.
Connect to Microsoft Learn's public MCP server with mcptool.Connect and ListTools, then hand the borrowed tools to a Foundry agent as ordinary agent.Config.Tools.
This lesson swaps the LLM behind an agent for another agent, reached over the A2A protocol instead of a model API.
Back a Go agent with another agent over the A2A protocol: resolve the remote card, open a gRPC client, and wrap it with a2aprovider.NewAgent.
The same agent primitive as the Foundry lessons, backed by the Anthropic (Claude) provider instead of Azure AI Foundry.
A provider swap onto Anthropic Claude: build an anthropic.Client, pass it to anthropicprovider.NewAgent, and run the identical agent surface.
Point the same agent at an Azure AI Foundry project endpoint using the project Responses API mode.
Run an agent against an Azure AI Foundry project: foundryprovider.NewAgent plus ModelDeployment selects project Responses API mode from the project endpoint.
Reach a Foundry-hosted model through the OpenAI-compatible Responses API by configuring a plain openai.Client with three request options.
Reach a Foundry model through the OpenAI-compatible API by configuring an openai.Client with base URL, an Azure token credential, and the ai.azure.com scope.
The same agent primitive, wired to Azure OpenAI's Chat Completions API where the model name is your deployment name.
Back an agent with Azure OpenAI Chat Completions via NewChatCompletionsAgent, where the Model field is your Azure deployment name, not a catalog model ID.
Back the agent with Azure OpenAI's Responses API, and toggle whether conversation state lives on the server or locally.
Back an agent with Azure OpenAI Responses via NewResponsesAgent, and use DisableStoreOutput to keep chat history local instead of stored server-side.
How the Foundry provider snaps a project endpoint, a credential, and a model deployment name into a runnable agent.
The Foundry provider is three inputs: a project endpoint, a credential, and a model deployment name. See how foundryprovider.NewAgent snaps them into an agent.
How an agent.Session carries conversation history so a second prompt can refer back to the first.
A client-side agent.Session carries conversation history so a second prompt can refer back to the first. Create it with CreateSession, thread it with WithSession.
How to keep a conversation's history on the Foundry service instead of in local memory, so the client never resends the transcript.
Create a Foundry project conversation, bind its ID into a session with WithServiceID, and let the service keep the transcript across turns without resending it.
How to wrap an ordinary Go function as a tool the model can call, with the schema derived automatically from its types.
Wrap a plain Go func with functool.MustNew and the framework derives its JSON schema and drives the tool call inside a single RunText — two model round-trips, one call.
How to gate a sensitive tool behind human consent: the run pauses, hands you an approval request, and only calls the tool once you approve.
Wrap a tool with ApprovalRequiredFunc and the run pauses with a ToolApprovalRequestContent; approve it, feed the decision back on the same session, and the tool fires.
How to make the model return a typed Go struct instead of prose — hand RunText a pointer, get back populated fields.
Pass RunText a pointer to a Go struct via WithStructuredOutput and the framework asks the model for matching JSON, then unmarshals it straight into your fields.
How to serialize an agent.Session to disk and resume it later, so a follow-up prompt still remembers earlier turns across a process restart.
An agent.Session serializes with encoding/json, so you can marshal it to disk or a database and resume it later with the model still remembering earlier turns.
otelprovider.NewMiddleware wraps every run in an OpenTelemetry span tagged with gen_ai attributes — the same one-line middleware hook you use for logging.
This lesson teaches how a Foundry agent borrows tools from a remote MCP server and calls them as if they were local functions.
Connect a Foundry agent to Microsoft Learn's public MCP endpoint over streamable HTTP, list its tools, and hand the whole slice to the agent as proxied tools.
This lesson teaches how to send a question and an image together in one message to a vision-capable Foundry agent.
Put a TextContent and a base64 DataContent JPEG in one message and hand it to a vision agent — multimodal input with no upload step, embedded at compile time.
This lesson teaches the simplest form of multi-agent delegation: wrapping one agent as a tool another agent can call.
Wrap a specialist WeatherAgent with agenttool.New into a tool.Tool and hand it to a French TravelAgent — one model orchestrating another with no workflow engine.
This lesson teaches a middleware chain where a guardrail can block a run before the model is ever called, chained ahead of a logger.
Chain a guardrail middleware that yields its own refusal and skips the model ahead of a logger — short-circuiting a harmful request offline before Foundry is called.
This lesson teaches how to bundle related function tools onto a Go type and attach the whole group to an agent as one slice.
Bundle GetWeather and GetCurrentTime onto one Go type, expose them as a tool.Tool slice, and let the model call both in a single turn — plugins as an organizing idea.
This lesson teaches the hosted tool: a marker that lets the Foundry service run code the model writes, instead of a Go function you implement.
Attach hostedtool.CodeInterpreter, a zero-value marker with no Run method, so Foundry executes model-written Python in a sandbox to solve sin(x) + x^2 = 42.
This lesson teaches how to attach the hosted web-search tool and read the citation annotations the service returns with its answer.
Attach hostedtool.WebSearch so Foundry grounds its answer on live results, then pull CitationAnnotations off content headers with a pure, unit-testable extractor.
This lesson teaches how to connect to a remote MCP server and decorate the tools it exposes with your own local behavior before an agent uses them.
List a remote MCP server's tools, then wrap each FuncTool with a logging decorator via embedding plus one Call override — MCP tools compose like any tool.FuncTool.
How swapping in the Gemini provider changes the constructor and credential — and nothing else about your agent.
The Joker agent, unchanged, now backed by Google Gemini: geminiprovider.NewAgent takes a genai.Client and an API key instead of an Azure token credential.
A provider whose "credential" is a local process, gated by a human-in-the-loop permission handler for every action the model wants to take.
A provider whose credential is a local copilot CLI process, with an OnPermissionRequest handler that approves or rejects each shell action the model wants to run.
The provider is the swappable back end: the same Joker agent, one-shot and streaming, now through the OpenAI API.
The same Joker agent, one-shot and streaming, through openaiprovider: openai.NewClient reads OPENAI_API_KEY and the model name lives in AgentConfig, not a Foundry deployment.
Teach an agent a capability from a folder of files — a SKILL.md manifest, resources, and scripts — loaded on demand via progressive disclosure.
Teach an agent from a SKILL.md manifest, resources, and scripts on disk: fsskills scans the tree and a skills ContextProvider exposes load, read, and run tools.
An Agent Skill — on-demand instructions, resources, and scripts — defined entirely in Go, with no SKILL.md files on disk.
An Agent Skill built from Go closures: instructions, a static and a runtime-generated resource, and a convert script that runs in-process with no SKILL.md files.
Compose three kinds of Agent Skill — code-defined, struct-based, and file-based — into a single agent through one skills context provider.
One skills ContextProvider blending three origins: in-memory volume and temperature skills plus a file-based unit-converter, unified behind one tool surface for the model.
This lesson teaches how to build a two-executor pipeline and watch it run as a live stream of typed events.
Your first Agent Framework Go workflow: two string executors wired by an edge, run with RunStreaming and watched as a stream of typed events, fully offline.
This lesson teaches how to host real `agent.Agent`s as workflow executors and chain them into a sequential pipeline.
Host three translation agents as workflow executors and chain them French to Spanish to English, using DisableForwardIncomingMessages and a TurnToken to drive a strict pipeline.
This lesson teaches that orchestration is a property of the workflow, not the agents — the same three agents drop into three different built-in graph shapes.
The same three agents dropped into three built-in agentworkflow builders — sequential, concurrent, and round-robin group chat — showing orchestration is a property of the graph, not the agents.
This lesson teaches how to chain three role-specialised agents — researcher → fact_checker → reporter — into one sequential workflow and stream each stage.
A sequential workflow of three role-specialised Foundry agents — researcher, fact_checker, reporter — built with NewSequentialWorkflowBuilder and streamed stage by stage.
This lesson teaches how to embed a whole built workflow as a single executor inside a larger one — workflows compose.
Embed an entire built workflow as one executor with inproc.BindSubworkflowAsExecutor, composing a Prefix to SubWorkflow to PostProcess parent graph that runs fully offline.
This lesson teaches how deterministic function executors and agent-backed executors compose in one graph with the same `AddEdge` wiring.
One workflow that mixes deterministic executors with two Foundry agent nodes for jailbreak detection and response, joined by the same AddEdge wiring and TurnToken triggering.
This lesson teaches how to build a cyclic workflow where a Writer and Critic loop until approval, using `AddSwitch` to route on structured output.
A cyclic Writer-Critic-Summary workflow: the Critic emits a structured CriticDecision, AddSwitch routes on Approved, and Context state caps the revision loop at maxIterations.
How two Foundry agents cooperate inside a cyclic graph workflow where one of them owns the loop control.
Two Foundry agents cooperate in a cyclic workflow: a SloganWriter drafts, a FeedbackProvider critiques and owns loop control via YieldOutput vs SendMessage.
How a multi-agent group chat pauses to ask a human for approval before one gated tool is allowed to run.
A QA and DevOps agent collaborate in a group chat where DeployToProduction is gated by tool.ApprovalRequiredFunc, pausing the workflow for human approval.
How to collapse a whole multi-agent workflow into a single agent so callers use it exactly like any leaf agent.
A concurrent French+English workflow is hosted as one agent via agentworkflow.NewAgent, with IncludeOutputsInResponse surfacing the merged output.
How to snapshot a running workflow at every super-step, then throw the instance away and rebuild a fresh workflow that resumes from a saved checkpoint.
A cyclic guess-the-number workflow snapshots state each super-step, then a brand-new workflow instance is rehydrated from a checkpoint via ResumeStreaming.
How to snapshot a workflow after every super-step, then rewind the same live run to an earlier checkpoint and replay from it.
Same guess-the-number graph, but RestoreCheckpoint rewinds the live run to the 6th snapshot and replays forward — no fresh workflow instance needed.
How to pause a workflow to ask a human, checkpoint every super-step, then rewind the whole graph to a saved checkpoint and replay.
A RequestPort pauses to ask a human for a guess while every super-step is checkpointed, then RestoreCheckpoint rewinds the whole graph including tries state.
How to broadcast one input to several executors in parallel and join their answers with a barrier — the core workflow graph primitives, with no LLM in the way.
A start executor broadcasts a question to two experts via a fan-out edge; a fan-in barrier edge joins both answers before the aggregator yields output.
How to express the classic MapReduce word-count as a five-stage workflow graph — fan-out to mappers, barrier to a shuffler, fan-out to reducers, barrier to completion.
MapReduce word-count as a five-stage workflow: fan-out to mappers, barrier to a shuffler, fan-out to reducers, barrier to completion, coordinated via shared state.
How a graph workflow forks: a predicate on each edge decides whether a message may pass, turning the graph into an if/else expressed as data flow.
The first 03-workflows lesson: AddDirectEdge attaches a func(any) bool to each edge so a spam-detection graph forks into send vs. handle-spam branches, offline.
How a switch builder fans one edge into three mutually-exclusive branches — the workflow analogue of switch/case/default.
AddSwitch/AddCase/WithDefault fans one edge into three mutually-exclusive branches with a guaranteed fallback — the workflow analogue of switch/case/default, fully offline.
How an edge assigner delivers one message to a chosen subset of targets — a multi-way switch that may fall through to more than one case.
WithEdgeAssigner yields target indexes via an iter.Seq[int], so a single message reaches several branches at once — a long email goes to both assistant and summary, offline.
How a RequestPort pauses a workflow, emits a request to a human, and feeds their answer back into the graph.
A RequestPort emits a RequestInfoEvent and suspends the workflow; the driver answers with SendResponse. A guess-the-number cycle shows the pause/resume mechanism.
How a workflow graph forms a cycle: two executors feed each other until one yields an output — the workflow analogue of a while-loop.
A workflow graph is not a DAG: two edges form a GuessNumber to Judge cycle that runs a binary search and exits only when Judge yields an output. The while-loop analogue.
How WithTelemetry instruments a whole workflow with OpenTelemetry spans, then agentworkflow.NewAgent wraps the graph so it behaves like one agent.
WithTelemetry instruments a French-to-English workflow with OpenTelemetry spans, then agentworkflow.NewAgent wraps the graph so RunText drives the whole pipeline.
How one executor stores a value in scoped shared state and later executors read it back — instead of copying a whole payload down every edge.
One executor stores a document with QueueStateUpdate; fan-out counters read it back with ReadState, and an AddFanInBarrierEdge aggregates once both deliver. Offline.
How a whole workflow binds as a single executor inside a larger workflow, so pipelines compose two levels deep.
inproc.BindSubworkflowAsExecutor binds a whole workflow as one node; an order pipeline nests Payment and FraudCheck two levels deep, and inner events still bubble up.
This lesson builds a Foundry host agent that discovers remote A2A agents by their cards and calls each one as a tool.
A Foundry host agent resolves remote A2A agent cards and turns each remote agent into a callable tool with agenttool.New over the a2aprovider.
This lesson hosts one specialized Foundry agent over the A2A protocol, publishing an agent card the client can discover.
Host one Foundry agent over A2A: newMux pins the card interface URL, wraps the agent in an a2aprovider executor, and serves the card plus JSON-RPC routes.
The final lesson ties the whole Go tutorial into one small product: an assistant that answers questions about your docs — grounded, cited, and refusing to guess.
The capstone: a grounded DocQA agent that answers only from embedded docs via a search_docs tool, cites sources, and refuses to guess — with an optional reviewer.
The client half streams events over SSE; this is the process on the other end of the wire — a Foundry agent wrapped in an HTTP handler that speaks AG-UI.
The AG-UI server half: wrap a Foundry agent in aguiprovider.NewJSONHTTPHandler and serve it over HTTP/SSE for any AG-UI client to drive.
Same AG-UI transport as the getting-started server, but now the hosted agent carries a tool the model can call server-side while it answers.
The server side of AG-UI backend tools: attach server-owned function tools to the Foundry agent so the tool round-trip stays entirely server-side.
The mirror image of backend tools: the server hosts the agent but the tools live on the client, so the handler must forward tool calls instead of running them.
The server side of AG-UI frontend tools: set DisableFuncAutoCall so the server forwards tool calls to the client to execute and awaits the result.
The server hosts an agent with one approval-gated tool — the model may propose calling it, but the framework refuses to run it until a human on the other end says yes.
The server side of AG-UI human-in-the-loop: gate a tool with tool.ApprovalRequiredFunc so the server suspends the run and resumes on the client's decision.
The final lesson: a recipe agent whose JSON replies are turned into trackable state snapshots by a middleware, so the client can render the recipe as it evolves.
The server side of AG-UI state management: middleware emits a DataContent state snapshot from the model's JSON so the client can adopt shared state across turns.
This series is part of a larger body of work by Pratik Dhanave, an Agentic AI Architect writing about production AI systems, distributed systems, and cloud-native engineering. Explore all course series, browse every post, or find topics via the tag index.