Agents-for-net streaming-response.instructions.md

Technical guidance for StreamingResponse in Microsoft Agents for .NET, a framework for building conversational agents.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when developing or debugging streamed agent responses, including Teams message streams, non-streaming fallbacks, and reused streams.
Why use it?
It explains how partial replies, final messages, timers, errors, and channels that do not support streaming should behave.

Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

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 instructions/microsoft/agents-for-net/streaming-response
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/Agents-for-net

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Per session 548 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 548 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
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 $0.00548 $0.00548
Opus 5 $0.00274 $0.00274
Sonnet 5 $0.00110 $0.00110
Haiku 4.5 $0.00055 $0.00055

Measured 2d ago against content hash e558f060ce79, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Agents-for-net streaming-response.instructions.md 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.

.github/instructions/streaming-response.instructions.md · 48 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 48 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

StreamingResponse Context

When working on streaming message delivery, read docs/streaming-response-sequence-diagram.md for the full mermaid sequence diagrams covering all scenarios (streaming channels, non-streaming fallback, error handling).

Key Design Points

  • StreamingResponse is an internal class exposed via ITurnContext.StreamingResponse (created per-turn in TurnContext).
  • It sends intermediate Typing activities on a timer interval, giving the UX of a streamed message. Each intermediate contains the full accumulated text (not a delta).
  • A final Message activity is sent with StreamInfo.StreamType = Final when EndStreamAsync() is called.
  • The timer is one-shot, re-armed after each successful send — prevents overlapping sends if SendActivityAsync takes longer than Interval.
  • Non-streaming channels buffer all text and send a single normal message on EndStreamAsync() — no timer runs.
  • Teams requires using the Activity.Id returned from the first send as the StreamId for all subsequent messages.
  • ResetAsync() allows reusing the stream for multiple streaming sequences in one turn.

Channel Intervals

Channel Interval Stream Start
Teams 1000ms StreamId from first response
WebChat / DirectLine 500ms Pre-generated GUID
DeliveryMode.Stream (A2A) 100ms Pre-generated GUID
Other / ExpectReplies N/A Non-streaming fallback

Error Scenarios

  • ContentStreamNotAllowed → user canceled on client; returns UserCancelled
  • BadArgument + "streaming api is not enabled" → disables streaming for this turn (does not cancel)
  • Other errors → cancels stream; returns Error
Component Path
StreamingResponse src/libraries/Builder/Microsoft.Agents.Builder/StreamingResponse.cs
IStreamingResponse src/libraries/Builder/Microsoft.Agents.Builder/IStreamingResponse.cs
TurnContext src/libraries/Builder/Microsoft.Agents.Builder/TurnContext.cs
Sequence Diagrams docs/streaming-response-sequence-diagram.md

Read the full file on GitHub · 48 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 · 48 lines · 548 tokens per session scan A e558f060ce79

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Agents-for-net streaming-response.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/Agents-for-net (177 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 548 tokens to every session, about $0.0027 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.

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