Developer tools and SDKs
Unit 5 of 8 · Module 1: Plan and prepare to develop AI solutions on Azure
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Beyond the portal
You can do a lot in the Foundry portal. But developers still need to write, test, and deploy code. So let's look at the tools and SD Ks you'll actually work with.
Choose your environment
Start with your development environment. There are plenty to choose from, so pick one that supports the languages, SD Ks, and AP Is you need, and that you're comfortable with. A developer building Windows apps on the dot NET Framework might prefer a full integrated development environment, or IDE, like Microsoft Visual Studio. A web developer working across open-source languages and libraries might prefer a lighter code editor, like Visual Studio Code. Both are great for building AI applications on Azure.
The Foundry Toolkit for VS Code
If you use Visual Studio Code, add the Foundry Toolkit extension. It simplifies the key tasks. Browsing and managing what's in your project, like deployed models, agents, connections, and vector stores, which hold documents an agent can search. Deploying models from the catalog. Testing models and agents in built-in playgrounds. Setting up agents, either in a visual designer, or in YAML, a plain-text settings format. And generating the integration code that connects agents to your applications.
GitHub and GitHub Copilot
Next comes GitHub, the place most developers keep their source code and run their DevOps: every change is saved and reviewed, so a whole team can build one project together. Visual Studio and VS Code both connect to GitHub out of the box, and both offer GitHub Copilot, an AI pair programmer that suggests code as you type and can speed you up a lot.
Languages
As for languages, you can build AI applications in most of the common ones: C sharp, Python, Node, TypeScript, Java, and more.
APIs and SDKs
Whichever language you choose, you'll work with three kinds of AP Is and SD Ks. First, the Microsoft Foundry SDK: it's how your code reaches a Foundry project and what lives there, like its agents and its Foundry IQ knowledge. Second, the OpenAI API: Foundry models that speak OpenAI's format work with the familiar OpenAI SD Ks, so chat code you've seen elsewhere carries over. Third, the Foundry Tools SD Ks: a library for each service, in many languages. And if there's no library for your setup, you can call any of those tools straight through its REST API.
Facts from Microsoft's documentation: Get started with Microsoft Foundry SDKs and endpoints; What are Foundry Tools? (CC BY 4.0), rewritten in Loop's own words and examples. Narration, animation, and quiz by Loop. Microsoft, Azure, and Microsoft Foundry are trademarks of Microsoft. Loop is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft.