AutoGen moved into maintenance mode in October 2025, and its successor, Microsoft Agent Framework (MAF), reached general availability in April 2026. Microsoft officially describes MAF as the direct successor to both AutoGen and Semantic Kernel, built by the same team. It combines AutoGen’s simple agent abstraction with Semantic Kernel’s enterprise features — session management, type safety, and checkpointing. This course covers that successor framework, and includes a migration section for developers coming from AutoGen.
MAF rests on two pillars: Agents (autonomous) and Workflows (controlled). One lets the AI make the call; the other lets a human fix the execution order. Knowing when to use which is exactly what turns a demo into a production system. This course builds both up through 17 hands-on exercises.
The course follows an 8-part roadmap. Section 1 covers the three-layer structure of ChatClient, Agent, and Session; Section 2 teaches how to give an agent tools with `@tool`. Section 3 is the first major milestone: multi-agent orchestration. It diagrams the five standard orchestration patterns, then has you build parallel review and a reception-to-specialist handoff yourself.
