Microsoft is previewing a .NET web app template intended to enable quick development of AI-powered chat applications.
Part of an ongoing effort to make AI development with .NET easier to discover and use, the AI Chat Web App template was announced March 6. The template can be installed with Microsoft.Extensions.AI.Templates by running the following command from the terminal:dotnet new install Microsoft.Extensions.AI.Templates. When installed, the AI Chat Web App template is accessible in the Visual Studio IDE and in the Visual Studio Code editor through the C# Dev Kit extension. Developers can run dotnet new aichatweb to create the template in their working directory.
The initial release of the AI Chat Web App template focuses on a Blazor-based web app, built via abstractions including Microsoft.Extensions.AI and Microsoft.Extensions.VectorData. The template also supports the retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pattern, which is commonly used to guide AI chat responses. Among the key features is the ability to create a chat-based UI to interact with sample PDFs or a user’s own data using RAG. The template includes code for data ingestion, caching, and processing, and supports both a local store for prototyping and Azure AI Search for more advanced configurations. Generated code includes UI components for chatting, citation tracking, and follow-up suggestions.
