Microsoft Teams AI Agents

Canonical version: Microsoft Teams AI Agents.

Microsoft's pitch for agents in Teams is that the agent stops being an app you open and becomes a participant in a conversation you're already having. The tooling is the Teams SDK (formerly Teams AI Library), now the recommended path for all new Teams development — agents, bots, tabs, message extensions, meeting extensions.

Private vs public agents

The distinction Microsoft draws:

• Private — one-to-one DMs, or targeted messages inside a group chat. The agent is your tool.
• Public — the agent sits in a channel or a meeting as a visible participant. Everyone sees what it was asked and what it answered.

The SDK

• TypeScript, C#, Python. GA for JS and C#, Python in developer preview.
• Handles authentication, event routing and Teams-specific plumbing so you write the message handler and not the transport.
• Scaffold with the Teams Developer CLI (preview):

npm install -g @microsoft/teams.cli
teams project new typescript my-agent

• DevTools for local testing without sideloading, which removes the worst part of the old Teams dev loop.
• There's also a teams-dev agent skill, so you can point a coding agent at it and ask for a Teams bot rather than reading the quickstart.

What you can build

AI-powered agents, message extensions, embedded web apps, Adaptive Cards, dialogs, and Microsoft Graph integrations. Adaptive Cards matter more than they sound: they're how an agent returns something structured and actionable instead of a wall of text in a chat bubble.

Protocol support

Two things worth noting because they're not Microsoft-proprietary:

• Model Context Protocol (MCP) — agents reach shared tools, skills and memory over the open protocol rather than a Teams-only extension mechanism.
• Agent-to-agent (A2A) communication — multi-agent workflows where Teams agents talk to each other.

Where it sits

Teams SDK is the surface-specific layer. It's a different thing from Microsoft Agent Framework (the general agent-building framework) and from Copilot Studio (the low-code path). Microsoft publishes an "SDK comparison" page precisely because the overlap confuses people.

Microsoft also started a monthly Building Agents for Teams blog series in July 2026, which is the useful thing to follow if you want to track where this goes.

Related

• Microsoft
• Microsoft Agent Framework
• Microsoft AI Agent Governance Toolkit
• Model Context Protocol (MCP)
• AI Agents
• AI Agent Harness

References

• Series announcement: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/microsoft365dev/building-agents-for-teams-turning-conversations-into-outcomes/
• Agents in Teams overview: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/agents-in-teams/overview
• Teams SDK welcome: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/teams-sdk/welcome
• Quickstart, create an agent with Teams SDK: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/agents-in-teams/quickstart-create-agent-teams-sdk
• Pick the right SDK for your Teams agent: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/teams-sdk/teams/sdk-comparison
• Teams Developer CLI: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/teams-sdk/developer-tools/cli
• Agent skills (teams-dev): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/teams-sdk/developer-tools/agent-skills
• Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/teams-sdk/teams/configuration/agents-toolkit
• Tools and SDKs to build Teams apps: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/concepts/build-and-test/tool-sdk-overview

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