2026-07-17: Upgrade agentic knowledge base to GPT-5.4 and default to "minimal" retrieval effort

This release upgrades the agentic knowledge base deployment to GPT-5.4 and changes the default retrieval reasoning effort to minimal, reducing mean retrieval latency by 31% in evaluation while maintaining comparable answer quality.

It also fixes agentic knowledge base creation with cloud ingestion, allowing both features to be enabled simultaneously.

An unrelated fix ensures azd hooks load the intended target environment based on AZURE_ENV_NAME, improving support for coding agents working in parallel on the repository.

What's Changed

• Fix azd target environment loading in hooks by @pamelafox in #3161
• Upgrade agentic knowledge base to GPT-5.4 by @pamelafox in #3164
• Default agentic retrieval reasoning effort to minimal by @pamelafox in #3167
• Fix agentic knowledge base creation with cloud ingestion by @bf-2026 in #3166

Full Changelog: 2026-07-10...2026-07-17