AI Agents in Semantic Kernel: ChatCompletionAgent, AgentGroupChat, and Orchestration

Agents represent the evolution from AI assistants that respond to AI systems that reason and act. An agent doesn't just answer questions—it breaks down problems, uses tools, collaborates with other agents, and drives toward goals autonomously. In Part 4 , we built production RAG systems. Now we'll explore Semantic Kernel's agent framework—from single agents with tools to multi-agent orchestration. What Makes an Agent? An agent combines three capabilities: Reasoning : Understanding context and planning actions Tool Use : Executing functions to interact with the world Memory : Maintaining state across interactions Semantic Kernel provides two main agent types: ChatCompletionAgent : Single agent with conversation and tools AgentGroupChat : Multiple agents collaborating on tasks ChatCompletionAgent: Your First Agent Let's build a customer support agent that can look up orders, process refunds, and handle inquiries: using Microsoft.SemanticKernel.Agents ; using Microsoft.SemanticKernel.Chat