Microsoft folded AutoGen — its research-driven multi-agent conversation framework — into Semantic Kernel, its enterprise agent SDK, and shipped the result as a single Microsoft Agent Framework in October 2025. AutoGen is now in maintenance mode: it still gets security patches, but new features and new projects are directed to Agent Framework instead.
This isn't a rename. AutoGen and Semantic Kernel had genuinely different design centers — AutoGen optimized for flexible, research-friendly multi-agent conversations; Semantic Kernel optimized for enterprise SDK consistency across Python, C#, and Java, with tighter Azure integration. Agent Framework is Microsoft's attempt to keep AutoGen's conversation patterns while giving them Semantic Kernel's production and governance story.
If you're starting a new project today, start on Agent Framework, not AutoGen — you'd otherwise be building on a track Microsoft has already said is winding down. If you have an existing AutoGen system in production, you don't need to panic-migrate; maintenance mode means it keeps working and keeps getting patched. But budget the migration as planned technical debt rather than something to revisit "eventually" — the gap between AutoGen and current tooling only grows. The practical risk isn't that AutoGen stops working overnight. It's that the ecosystem — tutorials, community answers, third-party integrations — increasingly assumes Agent Framework, which makes debugging an aging AutoGen system slower every quarter you wait.
If your agent logic is simple enough that it's really just an LLM call wrapped in retry logic — no multi-agent conversation, no complex state — it may be cheaper to rebuild that piece directly than to migrate a heavier framework's worth of scaffolding for it. That's a case where moving the logic into an n8n workflow that calls the model directly can be simpler than carrying framework-specific abstractions forward at all. Q: Do I have to migrate off AutoGen immediately?
A: No. Maintenance mode means it keeps receiving security patches. Migrate on your own timeline, but don't start new projects on it.
Q: Does Agent Framework replace Semantic Kernel too?
A: Yes — it's the merger of both AutoGen and Semantic Kernel into one framework, so Semantic Kernel projects are also moving toward it over time.
Q: Is the migration mostly automated, or a rewrite?
A: Expect a partial rewrite. Core concepts carry over, but the API surface differs enough that conversation flows and tool integrations need re-testing, not just re-importing.
Originally published on Automations Cookbook.