Weekly Update 26 January 2026 – Background Responses in Agent Framework, ACS 101, GitHub Copilot SDK

This week:

Microsoft Agent Framework: Using Background Responses to Create an AI Researcher and Newsletter Publisher

Empowering.Cloud Community Update – January 2026

Build an agent into any app with the GitHub Copilot SDK

Announcing winapp, the Windows App Development CLI

You can also listen to the audio-only version: Thoughtstuff Podcast – Tom Morgan on Teams Dev: Weekly Update 26 January 2026.

Find all my videos at thoughtstuff.co.uk/videos. You can also subscribe to the audio-only version of these videos, either via iTunes, Spotify or your own podcasting tool.

Transcript (AI-Generated)

Hello and welcome to another weekly update. I hope you’re doing well and had a good week.

A few interesting things to talk through this week. I still think something is going on with the Microsoft 365 developer blog in terms of its cadence. I’ve mentioned this before, and what seemed like a slow post-Christmas period continues. It could be staffing changes, deprioritization, or just a genuine lack of news. Either way, there are still fascinating developments happening elsewhere.

The first is a blog from fellow MVP Jamie Maguire about the Microsoft Agent Framework. He walks through how to use background responses with the framework—essentially letting an agent go off, do some work, and then come back asynchronously. Jamie’s example? Building an AI researcher and newsletter publisher. It’s an excellent application of long-running agent workflows using polling and background execution. He includes the full setup in his blog post, and I’d love to see this content presented at a talk in future.

Next, a quick mention of a video I recorded last year with Sean Keegan, a developer evangelist from Microsoft focusing on Azure Communication Services. We talked about communication APIs, Microsoft Teams integration, and building AI-powered voice solutions. It’s available now on Empowering.Cloud, and we went deep into helping developers understand the current state and exciting future of AI-first voice interaction.

Another area I’ve blogged about is the GitHub Copilot CLI. It’s Copilot for the command line—helping you interact with code without needing to be in a specific IDE. I use it mostly for less critical projects—where I don’t need to scrutinize every line but still want structure in my development. Even more interesting is the recent SDK release, which lets you bring CLI-level code generation and reasoning into your own apps or workflows. It’s in technical preview, and there’s a blog post on GitHub detailing how you can start using it.

If you’re already using the CLI manually and find you’re repeating the same workflows, the SDK could be the next step. I think it’s a great move in the space of automating repetitive coding with intelligent agents.

We’re at an interesting inflection point where AI tools are starting to differentiate by modality. Some tools are becoming better at code, others at images—and we’re starting to see people settle into stacks and preferences. This is good—it helps establish consistent benchmarks in an otherwise chaotic space.

Lastly, I want to discuss WinApp—a new CLI from the Windows app dev team. While it might not generate sensational news, it’s important. It’s a unified CLI to scaffold, package, and build native Windows applications—whether Electron-based, .NET, Rust, or others. Why is that exciting? Because AI agents work best with CLIs. Imagine using large language models to build Windows apps without needing prior platform knowledge. This CLI could enable that by abstracting away complexity and giving toolchains AI-friendly interfaces.

I’ll be watching to see how this develops, and whether it encourages more app creation for Windows. At the very least, it shows the team is laying smart foundations for AI involvement in app development.

That’s everything from me this week. Aside from the slow Microsoft 365 news cycle, there’s still lots to explore. I’m going to dig through past update notes to see if January is usually this calm. I’ll let you know what I find.

Have a great week whatever you’re working on, and I’ll talk to you again soon.