Build Intelligent Apps with Microsoft Foundry
From prompt to production: a guided Foundations challenge plus a modular Advanced tier covering grounding, action tools, evaluation, tracing, and deployment.
What is this?
What The Hack (WTH) is Microsoft’s hands-on, challenge-first format for learning by building. Instead of sitting through a lecture, teams move through a sequence of guided tasks, validate their work as they go, and lean on coaches for hints when they hit real friction.
This edition focuses on Microsoft Foundry. It runs in three tiers. Tier 1 · Foundations is one guided, linear challenge — four ordered steps that take every team to a deployed, grounded Northfield University IQ Assistant that answers from a real FAQ corpus with citations. Tier 2 · Advanced is a set of modular challenges you attempt in any order: action tools, evaluation & red teaming, tracing & observability, and deploying as a hosted agent — plus optional Extras. Tier 3 · Capstone is an open-ended design brief that composes everything into a multi-agent system built with the Microsoft Agent Framework (MAF).
Three tiers, two paths
Start with the guided Foundations challenge, branch into modular Advanced challenges in any order — or bootstrap straight to the Advanced tier — then compose it all into a multi-agent Capstone.
Three tiers
Tier 1 · Foundations — one guided, linear challenge (four ordered steps):
| Step | Focus | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Setup & Provisioning | azd up, keyless auth | Infrastructure live |
| 2 — Model & Playground | Deploy + compare models | Generic answers from your model |
| 3 — Your First Agent | Persona + guardrails | An agent that refuses out-of-scope asks |
| 4 — Knowledge Base (IQ) | Index the FAQ + Foundry IQ | Grounded answers with citations — END-STATE |
Tier 2 · Advanced (any order) — each assumes the Foundations end-state:
Tier 3 · Capstone — the open-ended summit: break the single Northfield IQ Assistant into a multi-agent team — a triage/router that fans out to specialist agents (knowledge, actions) and converges — orchestrated with the Microsoft Agent Framework (MAF). It’s a design brief, not a placeholder-fill: you decide the org-chart and wire the graph.
| Capstone | Time | Prereqs |
|---|---|---|
| Northfield IQ, the Team — Multi-Agent Orchestration | 2–2.5 hr core (+1 hr Magentic stretch, +1.5 hr hosted variant) | Foundations end-state + Action Tools |
See the Challenges overview for the full Two-Paths run guide (Beginner vs. Advanced-skip bootstrap).
Who is this for?
Students
You are in the right place if you know basic Python, want hands-on experience with modern AI tooling, and prefer learning by shipping instead of watching demos. No prior Microsoft Foundry experience is required.
Coaches
This site is built to help you pace teams, spot common blockers early, and keep the day moving. Use the Coach Hub for timing, facilitation prompts, and escalation guidance while keeping solution walkthroughs inside the repo.