Evolving Teams Developer Portal for an Agent-First Future
Helping Microsoft evolve Developer Portal from an app-centric product into an agent-first platform.
Platform Strategy · Agent UX · Design Systems
Helping Microsoft evolve Developer Portal from an app-centric product into an agent-first platform.
Platform Strategy · Agent UX · Design SystemsAs new agent capabilities were introduced, developers faced new agent concepts and workflows, identity and permission requirements, validation and publishing dependencies, multiple tools and entry points, and growing fragmentation across experiences.
The challenge wasn't functionality. The challenge was helping developers understand how everything fit together.
How might we help developers move confidently from idea to a publishable experience — without requiring them to understand platform complexity upfront?
Through customer feedback, workflow analysis, usability observations, design reviews, and collaboration with engineering and product partners, three themes emerged.
They wanted to create, configure, test, publish, and manage — while the platform was organized around technical structures and configuration models.
Developers could often complete tasks successfully but still lacked confidence that they were ready to publish.
Capabilities evolved independently, causing inconsistencies across navigation, terminology, validation, status, and guidance.
Expose only what's needed for the current decision.
Help developers understand where they are and what's next.
Provide structure without limiting flexibility.
Prioritize goals and outcomes over platform architecture.
These principles became a shared framework used across design, product, engineering, and content discussions.
This direction best balanced discoverability, flexibility, scalability, and developer confidence.
Should agents be a completely separate product experience, or part of the existing platform model?
I explored multiple approaches and ultimately recommended an Agent-First Entry Point with a Connected Configuration Model — helping developers create agents, manage identity, configure permissions, validate readiness, and publish confidently, without fragmenting the broader platform experience.
Clear pathways through creation, configuration, validation, testing, and publishing.
Developers could see current status, completed steps, outstanding requirements, and validation issues before publishing.
Technical complexity was surfaced at the appropriate moment rather than all at once.
Navigation, validation, guidance, and status communication became more predictable and reusable — consistent platform patterns that scaled across the experience.
As Developer Portal grew, consistency became a platform challenge. To help scale quality across experiences, I contributed to the Developer Portal Storybook foundation.
This reduced ambiguity, improved consistency, and created a stronger foundation for future investments.
Platform design isn't about removing complexity. It's about making complexity understandable.
The most valuable outcome wasn't a screen or a workflow. It was establishing the principles, patterns, and mental models that helped evolve the Teams Developer Portal from an app-focused experience into a connected, agent-first platform.