code_act

A way for an AI agent to solve tasks by writing and running code in a sandbox. The code can control multiple tools and data steps in one run.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for tasks that combine control flow, data transformation, and several tool calls. It helps an agent run a complete plan as a short program.
Why use it?
It reduces the repeated back-and-forth between the agent and individual tools. This can make multi-step tasks easier to express and coordinate.

Agent

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/managedcode/dotnet-skills/code_act
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/managedcode/dotnet-skills
Per session 14 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,626 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00014 $0.01626
Opus 5 $0.00007 $0.00813
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00325
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00163

Measured 2d ago against content hash 6a98c726edf4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

code_act scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

catalog/Frameworks/Microsoft-Agent-Framework/skills/microsoft-agent-framework/references/official-docs/agents/code_act.md · 132 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 132 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CodeAct

CodeAct lets an agent solve a task by writing code and executing it through an execute_code tool. Instead of asking the model to emit one tool call at a time, CodeAct gives it a sandboxed place to combine control flow, data transformation, and tool orchestration inside a single execution step.

In Agent Framework, CodeAct is exposed through backend-specific packages rather than a single built-in core type. A connector can add the execute_code tool, inject runtime guidance, and optionally expose provider-owned tools that are callable from inside the sandbox.

Why CodeAct

Modern AI agents often are not bottlenecked by model quality, but by orchestration overhead. When an agent chains together many small tool calls, each step usually requires another model turn, which increases both latency and token usage.

CodeAct collapses that model -> tool -> model loop. Instead of asking the model to pick one tool at a time, Agent Framework can expose a single execute_code tool and let the model express the full plan as a short program. The tools stay the same, the model stays the same, and the main change is that the plan runs once inside a sandbox instead of being scattered across several tool-call turns.

Read the full file on GitHub · 132 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 132 lines · 14 tokens per session scan A 6a98c726edf4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

code_act is an agent published in the GitHub repository managedcode/dotnet-skills (477 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 14 tokens to every session and 1,626 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.