Dev Advocating 🥑 @Microsoft
This blog post was created with the help of AI tools. Yes, I used a bit of magic from language models to organize my thoughts and automate the boring parts, but the geeky fun and the in C# are 100% mine. Hi! So, you’ve probably used a “claw” already. One of those CLI agents that plans, runs tools, remembers what it did, and more. Cool. But have you ever stopped to think about what’s actually going…
TL;DR Why this model is important (and what it is designed for) MagenticBrain is not just another general-purpose chat model. It is designed for agent orchestration: planning multi-step tasks, selecting tools, chaining tool calls across rounds, and deciding when to terminate with a final answer. That design matters because many app scenarios need more than one prompt/one [ ]
TL;DR When Microsoft Research introduced MagenticLite, MagenticBrain, and Fara1.5, it made a strong case for practical local agentic experiences: In plain words: smaller, specialized models can deliver real agentic behavior when the tooling is right. For this repo, that “tooling is right” moment means: Fara is now actually runnable end-to-end in .NET, not just listed as an [ ]
⚠️ This blog post was created with the help of AI tools. The geeky fun and the 🤖 in C# are 100% mine. TL;DR Someone asked me to add Inkling — Thinking Machines shiny new open-weights model — to ElBruno.LocalLLMs. I did the evaluation, and the answer is: not for now. 🔴 Inkling is a 975B-parameter, Mixture-of-Experts, multimodal (text + image + audio) [ ]
This blog post was created with the help of AI tools. I used them to organize ideas and write a first draft, but the workflow, the code, the testing, and the 🤖 enthusiasm are mine. Hi! I like reading AI news. I do not like opening seven tabs, comparing five versions of the same announcement, [ ]
Hi! If you have been playing with Foundry Local to run AI models on your own machine, you probably ran into the same thing I did: you never really know what is running. You load a model from the CLI. Your C# app loads another one through the SDK. A Python script spins up its own. A .NET [ ]
Hi! Part 1 of the CopilotHarness series Big models are great for heavy thinking. But what about simple questions — rename this variable , write a short docstring , what does this function do ? Those don t need GPT-5 across the internet. They can be answered instantly by a model running on your own machine, offline, for free. [ ]
Hi! If you are building local AI apps in C#, you quickly hit a practical gap: That is exactly why I created this library Why I created this I wanted a clean, non-REST, in-process integration where: So the library provides a thin adapter: Foundry Local SDK - FoundryLocalChatClientAdapter - IChatClient This lets you write provider-agnostic app code while still running local [ ]
Hi! For a long time, many of us used GitHub Copilot as if it were unlimited magic: autocomplete, chat, agent mode, code review, increasingly powerful models, massive context, and long-running sessions that sometimes felt like a pair-programming marathon. And it worked. Well, mostly. Now, with usage-based billing and AI Credits, many developers are seeing something [ ]
Hi! And for the Flash version, use the same generator with the Flash model id:
One of the most interesting announcements in the recent VS Code 1.122 release is that Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) models can now be used without signing in to GitHub. VS Code now supports BYOK scenarios, including chat, tools, and MCP integrations, without requiring GitHub authentication, making enterprise, offline, and air-gapped workflows much easier to [ ]
Hi! What happens when a Python-based AI agent and a .NET-based AI agent need to work together? That is the idea behind MAF-A2A-NVIDIA-NemoAgents (https://github.com/elbruno/MAF-A2A-NVIDIA-NemoAgents-private): a reference app that shows how to combine NVIDIA NeMo Agent Toolkit, Microsoft Agent Framework, Agent-to-Agent communication, and Aspire into one multi-agent workflow. The repo describes…
TL;DR This was the final ElBruno.NetAgent experiment: GitHub Copilot CLI + SQUAD using Azure OpenAI GPT-5.5 BYOK against the same app-building challenge I previously tried with CPU-only local models, GPU local models, and GPT-5-mini. The good news: GPT-5.5 was clearly better at staying inside phase boundaries, following safety rules, reducing broad stabilization loops, and working [ ]
The first screenshot shows GitHub Copilot CLI ready with the SQUAD agent and GPT-5-mini selected. Then SQUAD started spawning background agents.
Hi! Some of these started as small pet projects. IE: a quick helper for a demo, a tiny tool for a conference, a library to avoid repeating the same code again and again, or one of those “I’ll just build this in one evening” ideas that somehow becomes a real thing. And now, thanks to [ ]
TL;DR After my first CPU-only experiment with GitHub Copilot CLI and local models, I wanted to try the same idea again, but this time with a GPU-powered setup. The first experiment proved that running GitHub Copilot CLI offline with local models was technically possible. This second experiment showed something more interesting: With the right model, [ ]
TL;DR I tested GitHub Copilot CLI running offline with local models on a CPU-only Microsoft Dev Box. The short version: Or, in one sentence: CPU-only can be your copilot. Just do not promote it to engineering manager yet 😅 The experiment goal This experiment started with a simple question: Can I use GitHub Copilot CLI [ ]
Hi! If you re running Ollama locally on Windows—whether you re tinkering with LLMs, building local AI demos, or just curious about the overhead of large models—you ve probably wondered: Is it still running? How much CPU is it chewing? Did that model load? Welcome to ElBruno.OllamaMonitor. It s a no-frills system tray app that sits in your Windows notification area [ ]
Hi! What it is AspireMonitor is a Windows tray app that puts your Aspire AppHost status one click away. No browser tabs. No switching context. Click the tray icon, see what s running, Start/Stop your app, or pin the resources you actually care about in a compact mini window. Why it exists If you use Aspire, [ ]
Hi! usually hide my taskbar clock while recording videos, and after doing that dance one too many times, I had one goal: save a few clicks. Then yesterday, during a GitHub Copilot CLI session (watch it here), I decided to pick up the ClockTray app and turn it into a CLI tool. And here we are. [ ]
Hi! Two weeks ago, I shipped t2i — a terminal-first CLI for text-to-image generation. Today I m excited to announce two major additions that make t2i even more powerful: TL;DR 🤖 Part 1: AI Agent Skills — The Biggest Feature This is the feature I m most excited about: teaching AI agents how to use t2i automatically What Are Skills? Skills are packages of functionality that AI [ ]
Hi! I just shipped t2i, a terminal-first CLI tool for ElBruno.Text2Image. Generate images from your shell in two commands — no UI, no browser, just a simple cli interface to image generation from the cloud. This is the Lite edition (cloud-only, ~2.4 MB on NuGet) — perfect for CI/CD pipelines, deployment scripts, batch jobs, and developers who live [ ]
Hi! So, I ve been away from any scenario that involves and needs data mapping, until I get to OpenClawNet. So I got to the point that I need to map my entities to DTOs? I read this a lot runtime reflection doesn t play nice with AOT and trimming. 😅 So I SQUAD myselft and built: 👉 ElBruno.AotMapper [ ]
Hi! When Microsoft announced MAI-Image-2, I immediately thought: I need to add this to ElBruno.Text2Image. Today. So I did. 😄 MAI-Image-2 is Microsoft s new image generation model on Microsoft Foundry — high-quality generation, a synchronous API (no polling!), a 32K character prompt limit, and flexible dimensions. And it s already supported in ElBruno.Text2Image with the same clean interface you…
The Microsoft Bing Search team just dropped something big: 👉 https://blogs.bing.com/search/April-2026/Microsoft-Open-Sources-Industry-Leading-Embedding-Model They’ve open-sourced a new set of high-quality embedding models, designed to be competitive with state-of-the-art approaches — and ready to run in modern AI workflows. And here’s the fun part 👇 You can already use these models from C#/.NET.…
Hi! Earlier this year, Andrej Karpathy tweeted about using LLMs as knowledge compilers — a mind-bending idea: instead of asking an LLM questions, feed it raw data (papers, code, images) and let it automatically build a structured, navigable knowledge base. No RAG. No vector databases. Just pure understanding compiled into a graph. Then I saw @socialwithaayan showcase graphify — [ ]
Hi! You know that feeling when you re building an AI pipeline or a RAG workflow and you realize: Wait… I need to turn all these PDFs, Word docs, HTML pages, and random files into something my LLM can actually eat ? 😅 Yeah, me too. That s exactly why I built: 👉 ElBruno.MarkItDotNet A .NET library that converts files to clean Markdown. Think of [ ]
Hi! So Google just dropped Gemma 4 — their most capable open model family yet — and I couldn t resist. I spent a good chunk of time digging into the architecture, trying to convert models, hitting walls, finding workarounds, and hitting more walls. Here s where things stand with ElBruno.LocalLLMs. Spoiler: the library is ready for Gemma 4. The ONNX runtime [ ]
Hi! I needed a quick way to generate QR codes in .NET—no heavy dependencies, no complex setup, just something that works and that’s exactly why I built: 👉 ElBruno.QRCodeGenerator An open-source, lightweight library to generate QR codes in multiple formats: 🎬 Watch the video I recorded a quick demo showing how everything works end-to-end 👇 [ ]
Hi! Today I want to share something that s been hearing a couple of times: You know when you re building an AI agent or working with LLMs, and you have dozens (or hundreds) of tools available? What do you do? Send ALL of them to the LLM every single time, right? Yeah, me too. And it s [ ]
Hi! Are you ready to dive into the world of AI agents? Join us for an exciting four-session live series at Microsoft Reactor where we ll build OpenClawNet, a production-grade AI agent platform from scratch using .NET 10 and GitHub Copilot. What You ll Learn Over four interactive sessions, we ll transform a simple chatbot into an intelligent, autonomous [ ]
Hi! Let s look at this code snippet: That s it. This runs a local LLM. No API keys. No REST calls. The model downloads automatically the first time. Let me show you more. ⬇️ Download Progress and Model Info When you run a model for the first time, you probably want to see what s happening. Here s [ ]
Una nueva tanda de episodios de No Tiene Nombre trae noticias sobre inteligencia artificial, tecnología y el impacto real que estas herramientas están teniendo en el mundo del desarrollo y mas. Aquí tienes un resumen rápido de cada episodio con su enlace directo. 🎧 NTN 487 Título: NTN 487 – IA y nuevas batallas tecnológicasDescripción: [ ]
Hi 👋 If you’re experimenting with AI Agents in .NET, one of the concepts that appears quickly is Agent Skills. Skills are the mechanism that allows an agent to extend its capabilities: calling prompts, running code, or executing external logic. To make this easier to understand, we published a small sample repo: 👉 https://github.com/Azure-Samples/agent-skills-dotnet-demo The [ ]
Sometimes you want to see the clock all the time.Sometimes you want it completely hidden. Depending on how you work, the Windows clock in the taskbar can either be useful… or distracting. So I built a tiny utility that lets you toggle the Windows clock visibility with a single click. Meet ClockTray. The Problem Windows [ ]
Hi 👋 What if you could build a real-time voice conversation app in .NET — speech-to-text, text-to-speech, voice activity detection, and LLM responses — all running locally on your machine? That s exactly what ElBruno.Realtime does. 🎥 Watch the full video here Why I Built This I ve been building local AI tools for .NET for a while — local embeddings, local TTS with [ ]
Hi 👋 These days Microsoft announced FLUX.2 Flex on Microsoft Foundry, I immediately thought: I need to wrap this for .NET developers. So I setup a SQUAD team and I did it. And then I thought: Wait — I have a couple of Test-to-Image local pet projects, what if my SQUAD also help to polish and publish this? [ ]
Hi! Let’s look at these 2 code snippets… what’s behind them? 🧠 Snippet 1 — VibeVoice (Native TTS in .NET) This generates a WAV file from text using the VibeVoice-Realtime-0.5B model, running locally via ONNX.The first time you run it, the model is automatically downloaded. No REST calls. No API keys. No cloud dependency. 🧠 [ ]
Hi! Big milestone these days: The Microsoft Agent Framework (MAF) just reached Release Candidate status 🎉 Official announcement here:👉 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/foundry/microsoft-agent-framework-reaches-release-candidate/ As someone who has been building apps, samples, demos, orchestration experiments and livestream content around MAF for months… this one feels GOOD. Let’s talk about this.…
Hi! This post walks through a tiny but powerful scenario: ingest images locally, search them with natural language, and let an agent decide when to call tools. Everything runs on your machine, and it s an simple example of how to use Microsoft Agent Framework with local embeddings. We’ll use: Repo sample: https://github.com/elbruno/elbruno.localembeddings/tree/main/samples/VisionMemoryAgentSample…