AutoGen: Microsoft’s Multi-Agent Framework#
Microsoft Research’s pioneering open-source framework (56.8K GitHub stars) for multi-agent collaboration. Agents communicate through structured multi-turn conversations.
⚠️ Legacy (May 2026): AutoGen is now in maintenance mode. [[microsoft-agent-framework|Microsoft Agent Framework 1.0]] shipped GA on April 3, 2026, merging AutoGen + Semantic Kernel into a single production SDK. Plan migrations during 2026.
Current State (2026): Three Paths#
- Microsoft Agent Framework (MAF) — production successor. Merges AutoGen + Semantic Kernel. Graph-based workflows, checkpointing, Azure AI Foundry integration.
- AutoGen v0.7.x — maintenance line. Async actor-model. Research/prototyping. Home of Magentic-One.
- AG2 — community fork. Backward-compatible with v0.2 GroupChat.
Key Transition: GroupChat → Graph Workflows#
Old: implicit GroupChat where Manager Agent decides who speaks next. New (MAF): explicit Workflow with typed nodes and edges. This convergence toward graph-based orchestration mirrors langgraph-agent-orchestration.
Magentic-One#
Generalist agent team: web browsing, file management, code execution. Available as CLI: m1 "task".
Production Challenges#
Non-deterministic behavior, complex debugging, growing overhead with agent count, context switching between agents.