Building AI Applications with .NET

Workshop Focus:
Comprehensive hands-on workshop covering generative AI application development in .NET using Microsoft Extensions for AI. Participants will learn to build production-ready AI applications with vector databases, RAG patterns, function calling, and deploy them using .NET Aspire. The workshop includes practical experience with MCP servers, AI orchestration, and enterprise deployment patterns.

Key Learning Objectives:
• Building generative AI applications with Microsoft Extensions for AI
• Implementing vector databases for semantic search and embeddings
• Creating Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) patterns
• Function calling and AI tool integration
• Deploying AI applications with .NET Aspire
• Building and integrating MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers

Intended Audience
This workshop is for those who are interested in learning how to use AI in .NET Applications. You can be new to .NET, or be building .NET applications already, but some basic development experience is expected.

Prerequisites:

- You must provide your own computer for this hands-on lab.
- Basic software development experience is required, including familiarity with basic programming language constructs, tools, and techniques.
- Web development experience is preferred but not required.

Accounts:

- A GitHub account is required.
- An Azure account is recommended but not required. An Azure subscription will not be provided for this workshop.

Computer Setup:

You will need the following to complete this workshop:

- Windows 10/11, macOS, or Linux laptop
- A GitHub account
- EITHER Visual Studio 2022 (17.14.x) with the web development workload installed
- OR Visual Studio 20226 with the web development workload installed
- OR Visual Studio Code with the C# Dev Kit extension installed
- .NET 9 SDK
- Docker Desktop