AI Agents in ASP.NET Core with Microsoft Agent Framework: When to Use Them and How
Since Microsoft Agent Framework reached 1.0 GA in April 2026, "should we use an agent for this?" has become one of the most common design questions I get from .NET teams. Using Microsoft Agent Framewo
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Mateo Ruiz
A decision rule that's served us well is: start with the simplest orchestration that solves the problem, then earn your way to an agent.
Many workflows initially labeled "agentic" turn out to be deterministic pipelines with tool calling or structured outputs. Introducing an autonomous loop too early increases latency, cost, observability challenges, and testing complexity without adding much value.
The moment you genuinely need dynamic planning, retries based on intermediate results, or multi-step reasoning, that's where an agent framework starts paying for itself. Nice breakdown of where that boundary actually is.