Share via

DevUI - A Sample App for Running Agents and Workflows

DevUI is a lightweight, standalone sample application for running agents and workflows in the Microsoft Agent Framework. It provides a web interface for interactive testing along with an OpenAI-compatible API backend, allowing you to visually debug, test, and iterate on agents and workflows you build before integrating them into your applications.

Important

DevUI is a sample app to help you visualize and debug your agents and workflows during development. It is not intended for production use.

Coming Soon

DevUI documentation for C# is coming soon. Please check back later or refer to the Python documentation for conceptual guidance.

DevUI

Features

  • Web Interface: Interactive UI for testing agents and workflows
  • Flexible Input Types: Support for text, file uploads, and custom input types based on your workflow's first executor
  • Directory-Based Discovery: Automatically discover agents and workflows from a directory structure
  • In-Memory Registration: Register entities programmatically without file system setup
  • OpenAI-Compatible API: Use the OpenAI Python SDK to interact with your agents
  • Sample Gallery: Browse and download curated examples when no entities are discovered
  • Tracing: View OpenTelemetry traces for debugging and observability

Input Types

DevUI adapts its input interface based on the entity type:

  • Agents: Support text input and file attachments (images, documents, etc.) for multimodal interactions
  • Workflows: The input interface is automatically generated based on the first executor's input type. DevUI introspects the workflow and reflects the expected input schema, making it easy to test workflows with structured or custom input types.

This dynamic input handling allows you to test your agents and workflows exactly as they would receive input in your application.

Installation

Install DevUI from PyPI:

pip install agent-framework-devui --pre

Quick Start

Option 1: Programmatic Registration

Launch DevUI with agents registered in-memory:

from agent_framework import ChatAgent
from agent_framework.openai import OpenAIChatClient
from agent_framework.devui import serve

def get_weather(location: str) -> str:
    """Get weather for a location."""
    return f"Weather in {location}: 72F and sunny"

# Create your agent
agent = ChatAgent(
    name="WeatherAgent",
    chat_client=OpenAIChatClient(),
    tools=[get_weather]
)

# Launch DevUI
serve(entities=[agent], auto_open=True)
# Opens browser to http://localhost:8080

Option 2: Directory Discovery (CLI)

If you have agents and workflows organized in a directory structure, launch DevUI from the command line:

# Launch web UI + API server
devui ./agents --port 8080
# Web UI: http://localhost:8080
# API: http://localhost:8080/v1/*

See Directory Discovery for details on the required directory structure.

Using the OpenAI SDK

DevUI provides an OpenAI-compatible Responses API. You can use the OpenAI Python SDK to interact with your agents:

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="http://localhost:8080/v1",
    api_key="not-needed"  # API key not required for local DevUI
)

response = client.responses.create(
    metadata={"entity_id": "weather_agent"},  # Your agent/workflow name
    input="What's the weather in Seattle?"
)

# Extract text from response
print(response.output[0].content[0].text)

For more details on the API, see API Reference.

CLI Options

devui [directory] [options]

Options:
  --port, -p      Port (default: 8080)
  --host          Host (default: 127.0.0.1)
  --headless      API only, no UI
  --no-open       Don't automatically open browser
  --tracing       Enable OpenTelemetry tracing
  --reload        Enable auto-reload
  --mode          developer|user (default: developer)
  --auth          Enable Bearer token authentication
  --auth-token    Custom authentication token

Next Steps

  • Last updated on