Dev Blogs
See how Microsoft is transforming software development with agentic workflows, AI-powered automation, and specialized agents across the engineering lifecycle.
This is the fifth article in a series about Agent Experience (AX): the practice of making AI coding agents work correctly with your technology. The series covers what you can and can't control in the agent stack, how to measure whether your extensions are helping or hurting, and how to iterate toward better outcomes. Everything we've covered so fa...
You open a fresh chat, type "What framework should I use for a web app?", and the model says "React." You screenshot it, share it, and write "Claude prefers React." It gets engagement. People nod along. A few reply with their own results. And now we have a consensus: Claude prefers React. Except it doesn't. The model doesn't prefer anything. You're...
You built a skill for your technology. API references, authentication flows, SDK patterns, error handling, version info, all packed into one skill. The agent calls it, gets all that context, and generates code. The kicker? You've just wasted a lot of tokens. It already knows Models have ingested your documentation, your Stack Overflow answers, yo...
Your extension works in isolation. You measured it, confirmed it creates lift. Then a developer installs it alongside 14 other extensions, and outcomes get worse. The symptoms look like a bug in your code, but the problem is elsewhere: extensions fighting each other for the same context window and model attention.
You deprecated the old CLI and shipped something better. Developers are migrating, but AI coding agents aren't. They keep reaching for the deprecated tool, confidently scaffolding projects with something you sunset months ago. The agent isn't broken, your docs aren't wrong. The model is doing exactly what ten years of training data told it to do, a...
Your agent ran a scaffold command. Project generated, dependencies resolved, no errors. Everything looks fine. Except it's based on the project structure from 2020, and neither you nor the agent noticed. How npx picks the right-but-wrong version When an agent scaffolds a project or runs a CLI tool, it often reaches for without specifying a versi...
You shipped your skill. Everything looks like it's working. But is the generated code actually better because of your extension? You can't tell without measuring, and measuring agent extension impact is harder than it looks.
You built a dozen skills for your technology: authentication, CRUD, error handling, deployment, testing, monitoring. Then you installed a cloud platform bundle with 15 more covering diagnostics, storage, compliance, and cost optimization. A design suite. A marketing pack. Document converters for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF. Fifty skills, all sitti...