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Model Mondays is a weekly series that helps you build your AI Model IQ with 5-min news recaps, 15-min tech spotlights and 30-min AMA sessions with subject matter experts. Join us!
- Register for upcoming livestreams (Mon @1:30pm ET)
- Register for upcoming AMAs (Fri @1:30pm ET)
- Subscribe to the weekly newsletter
- Explore Season 1 & Season 2 episodes on our repo!
⁉️ | Have questions on the AI TOOLKIT EXTENSION FOR VS CODE
- Download the AI Toolkit and try it!
- Join the AMA on Friday, Jul 11 on the Azure AI Foundry Discord.
- Visit recaps & resources on the Forum to keep learning.
Spotlight On: AI Developer Experiences
In this episode we got to see a hands-on demo from Leo Yao, a Product Manager for the AI Toolkit, who took us through the various tools and capabilities that this extension brings to Visual Studio Code, to streamline our AI development journey. If you missed the livestream, you can catch up on the recap here:
What You'll Learn
So why should you watch this episode? Simple! If you wanted to see how you could streamline your AI Developer Experience without ever leaving Visual Studio Code, then the AI Toolkit is the extension you want to explore. In the space of just 15 minutes, I got to see Leo complete the following tasks, all within the IDE!
- Discover & use GitHub Models with a built-in playground feature.
- Deploy models (GPT-4) to Azure AI Foundry directly from VS Code.
- Build AI agents with Agent Builder (to createa a math tutor)
- Configure agents with prompts & tools (for an escape room helper)
- Integrate MCP servers to extend functionality (custom Python code)
- Deploy agents locally, and to Azure AI Foundry (for flexibility)
And that was just in 15-minutes. I can only imagine what other features and tools we are yet to discover if we try this out ourselves. Want to get links to the extension, documentation and key resources to skill up? You'll find the links in the deck below:
How to Get Started
Looking back, my first introduction to the AI Toolkit was in Model Mondays Season 1, from Microsoft Product PM Rong Lu. She gave us a comprehensive overview of the various features including support for data generation and evaluation. I recommend taking 15 minutes to review her demo in this episode:
Once you're familiar with the basics, I recommend you check out these three links to dive deeper into the process of building agent-based solutions on Azure AI Foundry with AI Toolkit and Visual Studio Code.
1. AI Toolkit for Visual Studio Code - Getting Started Guide - This is my recommended starting point. The tutorial covers installation, then walks you through the steps for downloading models from the catalog, then testing and integrating models into your application. You can then keep going with more tutorials to learn other features like fine-tuning support.
2. Azure AI Foundry Extension for Visual Studio Code - This extension now lets you work with the Azure AI Foundry platform capabilities directly from VS Code. This screenshot from the docs gives you a sense of the tasks you can achieve from your IDE - including project setup and model deployments.
3. Agent Builder in AI Toolkit -The Agent Builder in AI Toolkit simplifies and streamlines your workflow for building agents - from prompt engineering to tool integration (including with MCP servers). Get an intuitive sense for going from model to prompt to agentic workflows with tooling help.
⁉️ | Have questions? Don't forget to join us for the AMA on Friday (Jul 11) on the Azure AI Foundry Discord. Post your questions early on the Forum or revisit it later to get the transcript and resources from the discussion!
Read The Blog
Want an easy way to catch up on all the news? Check out complete blog series written by our resident student blogger here on Tech Community!
You can also follow her posts, right here on dev.to:
Build Your Model IQ!
Model Mondays Season 2 is currently scheduled to go from June to September, covering the 12 key topics shown below.
- 👉🏽👉🏽 Register for Upcoming Livestreams to get reminders
- 👉🏽👉🏽 Register for Upcoming AMAs to get reminders
