Microsoft updates AI chat template for cloud app dev

Microsoft is now offering a second preview of its.NET AI Chat Web App template. This update is intended to make it easier to build cloud-native, AI-powered chat applications via support for the.NET Aspire cloud-ready stack for building distributed applications.

Introduced April 17, Preview 2 follows Preview 1, which was rolled out March 6. Developers can download the new template from nuget.org. The.NET AI Chat template is designed to help developers quickly build an AI-powered chat application that can interact with custom data. Preview 2’s support for.NET Aspire enables advanced AI capabilities and “robust” integration options, Microsoft said.

This preview also integrates with the Qdrant vector database and offers an example of using this database. With this support, developers get an enhanced ability to prototype and scale applications with vector data. Additionally, Preview 2 supports configuration options in the Visual Studio Code editor; when using the template to build a project with the C# Dev Kit extension, developers can choose to configure additional options and select a model service provider as well as a vector store.

Future releases of the template will include Console and Minimal API templates, expanded support for Azure AI Foundry, and deeper integration with the Semantic Kernel team, according to Microsoft. Plans also call for including the template by default in the.NET SDK.