Every day, developers tackle complex workflows involving planning, coding, reviewing, testing, securing, and releasing software. These tasks, often scattered across various tools and platforms, create friction that slows us down.

At Microsoft, we believe AI can change that. This belief led us to create Athena, an AI-powered collaborative agent for developers, integrated directly into Microsoft Teams. What began as an internal experiment to reduce context switching has evolved into a platform that is revolutionizing how thousands of engineers, product managers, and engineering leaders at Microsoft ship software—faster and with less effort.

We introduced Athena at our Microsoft Build 2025 conference showcasing how it is helping thousands of developers within Microsoft streamline their work as a virtual teammate. Today, we’re excited to dive a bit deeper into how we built and use Athena; you can create your own version of Athena right within Teams.

AI-powered workflows, embedded where developers work

Athena isn’t just another chatbot—it’s a deeply integrated agent that acts as a virtual teammate, connecting people, tools, and data across the product development lifecycle. It anticipates what needs to happen next and helps teams take action without context switching.

• Pull request lifecycle support: We’ve seen that Athena recommends reviewers with 94% precision, nudges teams for action, and allows re-queueing builds directly in Teams.
• Work item management: Developers can query and update Azure DevOps using natural language.
• Semantic forms for task management: Athena enables task management using natural language, allowing developers to assign tasks, track progress, and update statuses directly in Teams.
• Security & privacy reviews: Athena guides teams through compliance processes, automating routine submissions and surfacing blockers early.
• Release readiness & health tracking: Provides real-time visibility into shipping status and blockers.

Transforming productivity inside Microsoft

Athena is used weekly by over 2,000 engineers at Microsoft, leading to measurable gains in speed, quality, and focus. Key improvements for developers include faster review cycles, earlier surfacing of release blockers, consistent completion of security and privacy workflows, and quicker delivery health assessments. Most importantly, Athena is helping teams spend more time building and less time managing work.

PR velocity improvement

With Athena, PR cycle times at Microsoft have dropped significantly. Intelligent reviewer recommendations, proactive nudges, and seamless Teams integration have cut down the time spent chasing reviews and resolving blockers, speeding up PR end-to-end times.

How is Athena able to do this? Athena is built by developers, for developers on Microsoft Teams, Azure DevOps, GitHub, and GitOps principles, making it easy to build, extend, and adapt to team needs. Workflows are version-controlled, modular, and seamlessly integrated with existing Teams setup. Engineers across product and platform teams at Microsoft have built new skills for Athena in days, not weeks. The ease of use has led to widespread adoption within Microsoft, and we’re confident you can replicate Athena’s success for your own organization.

Our own developers are practicing what they preach by building and using Athena in their everyday work:

“Athena has helped me accelerate my development by letting me track PR builds within Teams itself. It quickly informs me of any build failures, and I can jump on them immediately. I can also nudge reviewers directly from teams by using Athena and this leads to faster reviews, which leads to faster merge times.” – Afreen Rahman

“I was pleasantly surprised that Athena supported much of what I needed. After enabling some plugins, I got Athena to contextualize a PR and generate a work item based on the retrieved information.” – Bruno Ruiz de Somocurcio

Build your own Athena

If you’re a developer looking to bring AI into your daily workflows—or if you’re dreaming up the next productivity multiplier for your team—Athena is your blueprint. You don’t need to start from scratch. The same tools, infrastructure, and extensibility that power Athena are available to every developer building on Microsoft platforms.

To revolutionize your team’s developer experience today, start with Dex, our open-source template. This agent streamlines GitHub workflow integration directly within Teams, helping you stay on top of your repositories without constant context switching. Features include real-time notifications, custom filtering capabilities, and proactive updates. Want to learn more about Athena? Check out this breakout session from Microsoft Build that featured Athena, as well as how to build agents using the Teams AI Library.

Microsoft is investing in making Athena more proactive and adaptive, with features that suggest focus areas, coordinate releases, flag risk patterns, and keep teams aligned. We’re excited to share it with you and see what you build next.