AI Agents - Jannik Reinhard

Skills, MCP, CLI, Computer Use: Mapping the AI Tooling Surface in 2026

15. May 202622. June 2026 jannikreinhardLeave a comment

If you have built more than one AI tool in the past twelve months, you have noticed the same thing I have: the surface area of “how a model talks to systems” has exploded. Skills, MCP servers, CLI tools, Computer Use, function calling, declarative agents, custom engine agents, apps, actions, extensions, gems — every vendor uses a slightly different word for what looks like the same thing on a marketing slide. This is the AI tooling surface, and they are not the same thing. The trade-offs are real, the choice changes architecture, and picking the wrong part of the AI tooling surface wastes weeks.

This post is the mental model I now apply by default when I sit down to build something agentic and map it onto the AI tooling surface. It is opinionated. It is not a feature comparison. The goal is to help you decide which part of the AI tooling surface to reach for first, not to memorise the spec of each one.

I’ll cover seven surfaces (the original five, plus two that are too important to skip in 2026), map them across Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google terminology, and give you the decision tree I actually use to navigate the AI tooling surface.

Mapping the AI tooling surface in 2026 across Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft and Google

MICROSOFT 365 AGENTS EXPLAINED: WHA AGENTS 365 MEANS

Microsoft Agent 365 vs. Microsoft 365 Agents: A Field Guide for IT and Architects

5. May 202622. June 2026 jannikreinhardLeave a comment

Microsoft Agent 365 vs. Microsoft 365 Agents is the field guide distinction for IT teams and architects: one term describes governed agent operations, while the other describes the agents users build and run inside Microsoft 365 experiences.

If you’ve spent the last twelve months in the Microsoft AI ecosystem, you’ve watched the same pattern repeat: every announcement reframes the same thing under a slightly different banner. Copilot. Copilot Studio. Microsoft Foundry. Microsoft Agent Framework. Declarative agents. Custom engine agents. And now, two terms that sound almost identical but mean very different things Microsoft 365 Agents and Microsoft Agent 365.

I keep seeing them used interchangeably, including in serious technical posts. They are not interchangeable. With Agent 365 hitting general availability on May 1, 2026, getting this distinction right is no longer a pedantry exercise it’s a procurement, governance, and architecture decision.

This post is the field guide to Microsoft 365 Agents I would have wanted before I started building.

Microsoft 365 Agents: declarative agents, custom engine agents, and Agent Builder in the Microsoft Copilot host

CLI Tools vs MCP: Better AI Agents With Less Context

22. February 202622. June 2026 jannikreinhard9 Comments

Let’s be honest: MCP (Model Context Protocol) was supposed to be the universal connector between AI models and the real world. A clean, structured protocol that lets your AI agent talk to any tool through a standardized interface. Sounds great in theory. In practice? I’m increasingly reaching for good old CLI tools instead — and I’m not alone.

After months of building AI agent solutions and working with both approaches in real-world enterprise scenarios, here’s my take: CLI tools are the better choice in many cases, and the reason is surprisingly simple — context efficiency. Microsoft’s own guidance on CLI tools like the Azure CLI reflects how mature this tooling has become.

CLI tools for AI agents shown in a terminal window next to MCP

Microsoft IQ Explained: Making Enterprise AI Agents Work

26. November 202522. June 2026 jannikreinhard

This post is a practical explanation of Microsoft IQ — the intelligence layer that finally makes enterprise AI agents work in production. I cover what Microsoft IQ is, where it sits in the Microsoft AI stack, and how it changes the way IT admins design and deploy AI agents grounded in tenant data.

How Microsoft IQ Makes Enterprise AI Agents Work

Diagram of Microsoft IQ intelligence layer for AI agents

Let’s be honest: building AI agents in the enterprise has been a mess. You spend 80% of your time stitching together data sources, wrestling with RAG pipelines, and praying your agent doesn’t hallucinate the CEO’s name. Every new project feels like reinventing the wheel – but a wheel made of duct tape and hopes.

At Ignite 2025, Microsoft dropped something that might actually change this. They call it “IQ” – a unified intelligence layer that spans across Microsoft 365, Fabric, and Microsoft Foundry. And no, it’s not just another buzzword. If you’ve been experimenting with smaller Foundry use cases, like a paperless-office document manager, this is the enterprise-scale version of that same idea. Let me break down what Microsoft IQ actually means for you.

Become a Prompt Engineering Pro: Mastering the Art of Talking to AI in 2025

30. November 202422. June 2026 jannikreinhard

To become a Prompt Engineering Pro in 2025 you have to master more than tricks — you have to master the art of talking to AI in a way that produces consistent results, especially when it comes to designing AI Conversations that scale. This post walks through the patterns that have worked for me across hundreds of agents, prompts, and AI conversations, and the structures every Prompt Engineering Pro now applies by default.

Welcome to the future, where chatting with AI is as common as texting a friend! But just like crafting the perfect message to your crush, getting the right response from AI requires a bit of finesse. Enter the world of prompt engineering — and the mindset of a true Prompt Engineering Pro.

Building an Intune AI Voice Bot with Azure OpenAI

23. April 202322. June 2026 jannikreinhard1 Comment

This post documents building an Intune AI voice bot with Azure OpenAI. The Intune AI voice bot listens to a help-desk-style spoken question, queries Microsoft Graph for the user’s Intune device state, and answers — out loud — with the relevant policy or compliance information.

In today’s blog, I will announce the release of our experimental AI-driven voice assistant for Microsoft Intune-related questions. As you know, I am a huge fan of automation and AI technologies. I teamed up with Fabian Peschke to develop this innovative Intune AI voice bot that aims to help users with their Intune questions.

Our voice bot is built using two different Microsoft cognitive services: Azure Speech Services and OpenAI’s GPT-35 Turbo. The Azure Speech Services allows the bot to recognize and synthesize speech, while OpenAI’s engine enables the bot to understand and respond to user queries intelligently. This Intune AI voice bot was developed based on this example from Microsoft.

Microsoft Intune & AI Insights

AI Agents — Articles by Jannik Reinhard