Surface IT Pro Blog:
If you just bought a Copilot+ PC and want to know what that NPU can actually do, this is for you. If you manage a fleet of them and need workload placement guidance, this is for you too.
Cloud doesn’t have to be the default anymore. The NPU (Neural Processing Unit) is now a practical and accessible development target, making it possible to run advanced AI workloads directly on your device. This means you can take advantage of your PC’s local hardware to get faster results, lower latency, and even work offline or in airplane mode. Getting started with NPU development is easier than you might expect.
Foundry Local serves models through an OpenAI-compatible endpoint on localhost, so if you’ve used the OpenAI SDK, you already know how to build for the NPU. Combine that with AI-augmented coding and you don’t need to be a pro developer... you just need to be specific about what you want.
I’m in Surface Marketing. I haven’t done daily development work since the Petzold “Programming Windows” days... back when writing a hello world app meant 90 lines of C and a WndProc callback. Early in my career I quickly figured out I wasn’t the most talented dev in the room, but I was good at integrating hardware solutions and telling the story of what they could do. Now, with vibe coding, the thing that wasn’t my vibe has become a superpower... “wait, could I vibe code that?” And the answer keeps being yes.
I just built a working on-device AI application with four tabs and five AI tasks by describing features to an AI coding assistant. This post is everything I learned along the way: the platform, the tools, the workflow, and the real considerations that only surface when you’re actually building on the hardware.
Ready to skip to the good stuff? Jump ahead:
- Want a working app fast? → Your First NPU App in Minutes
- Validating model choices? → AI Toolkit Model Catalog
- Deploying to mixed fleets? → Cross-Platform Development + Operationalizing
- Need vision capabilities? → Phi Silica
- Want to see what we built? → The Surface NPU Demo App
Read more:
Vibe Coding for the NPU | Microsoft Community Hub
If you just bought a Copilot+ PC and want to know what that NPU can actually do, this is for you. If you manage a fleet of them and need workload placement...
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