AutoGen

AutoGen is an open-source programming framework for agentic AI, originally released by Microsoft Research. Its central idea is the conversable agent: applications are built from multiple agents that exchange messages with one another, with tools, and optionally with a human in the loop. By framing automation as a conversation between specialized agents, AutoGen lets a developer compose patterns such as a planner agent delegating to a coder agent that in turn calls an executor.

Capabilities

AutoGen supports large language model calls, tool and function use, and both fully autonomous and human-supervised workflows. It includes multi-agent conversation patterns for coordinating how agents take turns, when they stop, and how results are aggregated. The project provides Python tooling and a layered architecture so builders can work at a high level or drop down to lower-level primitives.

Project status

As of 2026, Microsoft has placed AutoGen in maintenance mode, continuing critical bug fixes and security patches while directing new development toward a unified Microsoft Agent Framework that merges lessons from AutoGen and Semantic Kernel. Readers evaluating AutoGen today should weigh that trajectory against their needs. We note this neutrally; AutoGen remains widely studied and a useful reference point for how multi-agent conversation frameworks are structured.

For related orchestration tooling, D-Central also defines Semantic Kernel and the broader ReAct pattern that informs many agent loops. These entries describe each project on its own terms rather than ranking them.