index.md

title	Conversations & Memory overview in Agent Framework
description	Learn the core AgentSession usage pattern and how to navigate sessions, context providers, and storage.
zone_pivot_groups	programming-languages
author	eavanvalkenburg
ms.topic	conceptual
ms.author	edvan
ms.date	02/13/2026
ms.service	agent-framework

Conversations & Memory overview

Use AgentSession to keep conversation context between invocations.

Core usage pattern

Most applications follow the same flow:

:::zone pivot="programming-language-csharp"

1. Create a session (CreateSessionAsync())
2. Pass that session to each RunAsync(...)
3. Rehydrate from serialized state (DeserializeSessionAsync(...))
4. Continue with a service conversation ID (varies by agent, e.g. myChatClientAgent.CreateSessionAsync("existing-id"))

:::zone-end

:::zone pivot="programming-language-python"

1. Create a session (create_session())
2. Pass that session to each run(...)
3. Rehydrate by service conversation ID (get_session(...)) or from serialized state

:::zone-end

:::zone pivot="programming-language-csharp"

// Create and reuse a session
AgentSession session = await agent.CreateSessionAsync();

var first = await agent.RunAsync("My name is Alice.", session);
var second = await agent.RunAsync("What is my name?", session);

// Persist and restore later
var serialized = agent.SerializeSession(session);
AgentSession resumed = await agent.DeserializeSessionAsync(serialized);

:::zone-end

:::zone pivot="programming-language-python"

# Create and reuse a session
session = agent.create_session()

first = await agent.run("My name is Alice.", session=session)
second = await agent.run("What is my name?", session=session)

# Rehydrate by service conversation ID when needed
service_session = agent.get_session(service_session_id="<service-conversation-id>")

# Persist and restore later
serialized = session.to_dict()
resumed = AgentSession.from_dict(serialized)

:::zone-end

Guide map

Page	Focus
Session	AgentSession structure and serialization
Context Providers	Built-in and custom context/history provider patterns
Context Compaction	Efficiently manage conversation growth
Storage	Built-in storage modes and external persistence strategies

Next steps

[!div class="nextstepaction"] Session