GitHub Copilot SDK Brings Agentic Workflows to Your .NET Apps

TL;DR: The GitHub Copilot SDK, now in technical preview, lets developers embed the same engine that powers GitHub Copilot CLI into their own apps . For .NET engineers on Azure, this means you can build agentic workflows without reinventing the planner, tool loop, and orchestration layer. The SDK exposes support for multiple AI models, custom tool definitions, MCP server integration, GitHub authentication, and real-time streaming . If you’re shipping agents on Azure, this is worth a serious look.

Why This Matters Right Now

With MCP reducing the friction of connecting agents to real systems, 2026 is likely to be the year agentic workflows finally move from demos into day-to-day practice . The Copilot SDK removes a major friction point: you no longer need to build your own agent orchestration from scratch. Instead, you get a battle-tested, GitHub-maintained engine that already knows how to plan, loop through tools, and handle streaming responses.

For .NET teams, this is particularly valuable because most implementations of AI agent patterns assume Python or TypeScript, and if your organization runs on the Microsoft stack, you need an implementation that speaks C# .

Integration with Microsoft Agent Framework

The real power emerges when you combine the Copilot SDK with Microsoft’s broader AI strategy. Microsoft senior software engineer Dmytro Struk listed several reasons to use the Copilot SDK in combination with Microsoft’s Agent Framework, including a consistent agent abstraction that makes it possible to swap providers or combine them without restructuring your code, support for multi-agent workflows using built-in orchestrators and ecosystem integration . Struk describes a multi-agent workflow where an Azure OpenAI agent drafts a marketing tagline and a GitHub Copilot agent reviews it, orchestrated in a sequential pipeline . This is the kind of practical, production-ready pattern that moves beyond proof-of-concept.

What You Can Build

You can integrate Copilot into any environment—build GUIs that use AI workflows, create personal tools that level up your productivity, or run custom internal agents in your enterprise workflows . The SDK gives you programmatic access to core components needed for agentic workflows, including a planner, a tool loop, and orchestration primitives.

A Word of Caution

This is technical preview, not GA. Expect the API to evolve. But if you’re already building agents on Azure and considering how to standardize your orchestration layer, the Copilot SDK removes a lot of boilerplate and gives you a foundation that aligns with Microsoft’s own Agent Framework—which means your investment is likely to stay relevant as the ecosystem matures.

Further Reading

  • https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/02/github-copilot-sdk/
  • https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/ai/dotnet-ai-ecosystem
  • https://devblogs.microsoft.com/foundry/dotnet-ai-skills-executor-azure-openai-mcp/
  • https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/ai/overview
  • https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/02/in-2026-ai-will-move-from-hype-to-pragmatism/