[LI (ktz03)]

Motivation & Context

AzureAISearchContextProvider.before_run() filters every message by text content before choosing a retrieval mode. That drops image-only messages before the existing knowledge-base image converter can handle them. With a one-message history limit, a previous text message is sent instead of the latest image.

Description & Review Guide

• What are the major changes? Retain supported image URI/data content for agentic low and medium reasoning before applying the history limit. Image eligibility matches the existing converter. Add regressions through before_run for retrieval requests, user/assistant roles, image forms, history selection, and unsupported content.
• What is the impact of these changes? Image-only messages reach the existing messages-based retrieval path. Semantic search and agentic minimal mode remain text-based; system messages, non-image attachments, and empty inputs remain excluded. The 28 new cases reproduce 14 failures with 14 passing controls before the fix and all pass afterward. On Windows/Python 3.14.3, the package's non-integration suite passes 417 tests with stable SDK 12.0.0 and skips 12 for unavailable SDK capabilities; preview SDK 12.1.0b2 passes all 429 tests with 96% coverage. Both runs deselect one integration test and retain one existing experimental-filter warning. Ruff, source Pyright, all five test type checkers, applicable pre-commit hooks, and wheel/sdist builds pass. A separate 13-case check uses real preview SDK request serialization with discovery/transport substitutes; it does not exercise Azure service retrieval, image downloads, authentication deployment, or models.
• What do you want reviewers to focus on? Matching the current image-conversion contract, applying the history limit after content eligibility, and preserving text-based retrieval and unsupported-content controls.

Related Issue

Fixes #9074

Contribution Checklist

• The code builds clean without any errors or warnings
• All unit tests pass, and I have added new tests where possible
• The PR follows the Contribution Guidelines
• This PR is linked to an issue and there is no other open PR for this issue (see Related Issue above).
• This is not a breaking change. If it is a breaking change, add the breaking change label (or add "[BREAKING]" to the title prefix, before or after any language prefix) — a workflow keeps the label and the title prefix in sync automatically.

[Copilot]

Copilot review overview

🟢 Approval recommended

The focused fix matches the existing image-conversion contract and has targeted regression coverage with no unresolved findings.

Review effort: Balanced
Findings: None

What changed in this PR

Fixes #9074 by preserving supported image-only messages for Azure AI Search agentic retrieval.

Changes:

• Includes images in low and medium reasoning modes before applying history limits.
• Adds 28 regression cases while preserving text-only modes and unsupported-content filtering.

File	Description
python/​packages/​azure-ai-search/​tests/​test_aisearch_context_provider.py	Tests image retrieval, history selection, and excluded inputs.
python/​packages/​azure-ai-search/​agent_framework_azure_ai_search/​_context_provider.py	Retains eligible image messages for messages-based retrieval.

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