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AI-103 Practice Question 4: Prompt Agent vs Hosted Agent

Microsoft Azure AI Apps and Agents Developer Associate (AI-103) · Test 1 · question 4 of 10

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An HR team wants an internal assistant that answers benefits questions. The requirements are modest: a system prompt, one deployed model, the file search tool over the employee handbook, and web search for public government pages. There is no custom orchestration logic, and the team has no one to maintain application code, containers, or scaling.

Which Foundry Agent Service option gets them there with the least to build and operate?

Select one answer
Show answer and explanation

Answer:

  • D. A prompt agent, defined entirely through configuration (instructions, model, and tools) that Foundry runs for them

Prompt agents are the fastest path in Foundry Agent Service. You define instructions, model selection, and tools, and Foundry runs the agent for you; there's no application code to maintain and no containers or packages to optimize, scale, or monitor. Microsoft names exactly this audience as the best fit: getting started fast, internal tools, and production agents that don't need custom orchestration logic.

- A is wrong because hosted agents are for teams that need the most control; you bring your own code and framework as a container. That is runtime code to maintain and container compute to pay for, bought for control this team doesn't need. - B is wrong because calling the Responses API directly means the agent's definition lives in your application code, so you still own, deploy, and operate that application. - C is wrong because hand-writing the orchestration loop is the most work of all: you reimplement tool routing and conversation handling that the managed runtime already provides.

Reference: What is Microsoft Foundry Agent Service?

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