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dotnet··1h 16m

.NET MAUI Community Standup | Introducing maui-labs

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TL;DR

  • Microsoft’s new maui-labs repo is the team’s experimental playground — Gerald Versluis and David Ortinau introduced it as the place for fast-moving, semi-official .NET MAUI ideas like maui devflow, a new MAUI CLI, Linux support, and a revived Comet/MVU experiment without waiting for the main repo’s monthly cadence.

  • maui devflow is the headline feature because it gives AI agents “hands, eyes, fingers, feet” inside MAUI apps — it injects a debug-only HTTP agent into the app, exposes an MCP server, and lets Copilot or other agents inspect the visual tree, take screenshots, tap controls, scroll, and even tweak UI properties live.

  • The team says AI changes the build-vs-buy equation for complex controls — they use calendars, PDF viewers, Bluetooth integrations, and even Android/iOS bindings as examples where community members like Alan Ritchie, Michael Stoneman, and Gerald himself are now shipping things that previously felt too expensive or too specialized to attempt.

  • .NET MAUI’s engineering velocity is up sharply, especially in .NET 11 — David called out about 70 MAUI-specific changes in .NET 11 Preview 2, open PRs dropping from roughly 670 to the low 300s, and a March stat of 293 issues closed versus a usual sub-100 month.

  • The stream’s core ask was simple: try the experiments and tell the team what deserves to become real product — David framed Maui Labs as a new feedback loop where Microsoft can spin up prototypes cheaply with AI, then use stars, issues, survey responses, and usage to decide whether ideas like Linux backends or Comet should graduate.

  • Even the rough live demo made the point — after some SDK/workload hiccups on Gerald’s M1 Mac, Copilot eventually launched a MAUI app, inspected the live visual tree, found the “Click me” button, tapped it repeatedly from the terminal, and narrated what it was doing without any manual simulator interaction.

The Breakdown

Time Zones, MVP Summit, and Standup Chaos Energy

The stream opens in pure community-standup mode: coffee jokes, daylight-savings confusion across the US and Europe, and a couple of April Fool’s fake-outs. From there they detour into Microsoft MVP lore — badges, jackets, nomination rules, and the perk of getting invited to campus for NDA-heavy conversations with product teams.

Alan Ritchie’s AI-Fueled MAUI Component Blitz

They spotlight a flood of new community work from Alan Ritchie, including Bluetooth support for Windows, a scheduling calendar, contacts access, shell tweaks, UI automation ideas, and even MSBuild-based permissions. Gerald’s reaction is basically: this should probably be in the product, because it turns platform permissions into the same kind of single-project experience MAUI already gives you for icons and splash screens.

Why AI Changes the Math on Controls and Native Bindings

A big theme emerges: controls like calendars and list-style views are hard because they try to do everything for everyone. David jokes about “CollectionView 3,” then turns it into a challenge — file concrete issues, because he wants to point “my army of agents” at the problem. Gerald backs that up with his own story: he finally built Rive bindings by feeding AI Objective Sharpie docs plus the Android and iOS repos and letting it “figure it out,” something he says used to feel like rocket science.

MAUI’s Current Pace: Preview 2, PR Cleanup, and SkiaSharp Glow-Up

They zoom out to product momentum. David says .NET 11 Preview 2 shipped with around 70 MAUI-specific features and changes, Preview 3 is close, and Preview 4 will be “a big one.” He also shows open PRs in the MAUI repo dropping from around 620-670 to the low 300s, plus a March dashboard with 293 issues closed — a huge jump from the usual under-100 pace.

Skills, Surveys, and the New Feedback Loop

Next they show the .NET skills repo, where Gerald merged improved MAUI-focused skills like MAUI Doctor, app lifecycle help, theming, navigation, safe area, and CollectionView guidance. Then David premieres a new quarterly survey, pitching it as the input that shapes what Gerald works on next — with Easter eggs, platform questions, and a bunch of AI workflow prompts meant to capture how developers are actually building now.

Enter maui-labs: Fast Experiments Without Polluting the Core Repo

The main announcement is maui-labs, an official-but-experimental home for ideas the team wants to move faster on. Gerald frames it as a place for things supported by AI but not only about AI: a MAUI CLI, devflow, Linux support, and whatever else the team wants to test in public before deciding whether it belongs in the main product.

Dev Flow: Giving Copilot a Way Into Your Running App

This is the part they’re most excited about. maui devflow injects a debug-only agent into the app, exposes an MCP server, and lets AI tools query screenshots, inspect the live visual tree, monitor connectivity and performance, and interact with controls directly. Gerald says mobile is especially hard for LLMs because the app lives on a different device and often outside the editor, so Dev Flow exists to bridge that gap.

The Live Demo Wobbles, Then Delivers the Point

The demo has exactly the kind of messiness you’d expect from a live stream: missing workloads, global JSON confusion, and Matthew Leibowitz in chat warning not to install SDKs right before a demo. But eventually Copilot creates a MAUI app, wires in Dev Flow, launches the simulator, inspects the UI, taps the “Click me” button multiple times, and explains each step from the terminal. That imperfect ending actually supports their broader pitch: the tooling is early, but the workflow already feels like “living in the year 3000.”