Microsoft Agent Framework and Foundry Starter Pack in .NET

This is a starter template to build a .NET-based agentic AI app using Microsoft Agent Framework and Microsoft Foundry with Aspire.

What is this starter pack for?

Building AI agents is getting easier. Deploying them as part of a real application, with multiple services, persistent state, and production infrastructure, is where things get complicated. But where should we start building architecture to deploy them onto the cloud in a cloud-native way?

This starter pack is where you should start from. It's an opinionated way to build an AI agent system using Microsoft Agent Framework and Microsoft Foundry with Aspire. If you're unsure where to start, this starter pack will guide you walk through.

Features

This stater template provides the following features:

• Blazor frontend for chat UI
• ASP.NET backend with Microsoft Agent Framework
• Microsoft Foundry Hosted Agents for agent hosting
• To-do list management MCP server for tooling support to agent
• Aspire for cloud-native app orchestration

Prerequisites

• Azure subscription (free)
• .NET 10 SDK or higher
• Visual Studio 2026 or VS Code + C# Dev Kit
• Docker Desktop or equivalent
• Azure Developer CLI
• Azure CLI
• Aspire CLI

Quickstart

This starter pack has a three-step deployment process, which mimicks the real-world scenario. MCP servers, agents and apps are usually deployed separately.

1. Deploy an MCP server.
2. Deploy a hosted agent to Microsoft Foundry.
3. Deploy apps via Aspire.

Get repository root

1. Get the repository root.

   # bash/zsh
   REPOSITORY_ROOT=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)

   # PowerShell
   $REPOSITORY_ROOT = git rev-parse --show-toplevel

Login to Azure

1. Login to Azure using azd.

   azd auth login

2. Login to Azure using az.

   az login

Deploy To-do MCP server

1. Navigate to the resources-mcp directory.

   cd $REPOSITORY_ROOT/resources-mcp

2. Deploy a To-do MCP server.

   azd up

   While provisioning, you might be asked to enter environment name, Azure subscription and location.

   NOTE: You may have to set the environment variable, AZURE_TENANT_ID.

   # bash/zsh
   AZURE_TENANT_ID=$(az account show --query "tenantId" -o tsv)

   # PowerShell
   $env:AZURE_TENANT_ID = az account show --query "tenantId" -o tsv

Deploy Microsoft Foundry Hosted Agents

1. Navigate to the resources-foundry directory.

   cd $REPOSITORY_ROOT/resources-foundry

2. Deploy a hosted agent to Microsoft Foundry.

   azd up

   While provisioning, you might be asked to enter environment name, Azure subscription and location.

   NOTE: You may have to set the environment variable, AZURE_TENANT_ID.

   # bash/zsh
   AZURE_TENANT_ID=$(az account show --query "tenantId" -o tsv)

   # PowerShell
   $env:AZURE_TENANT_ID = az account show --query "tenantId" -o tsv

Deploy apps to Azure

1. Make sure you're at the repository root.

   cd $REPOSITORY_ROOT

2. Deploy the app.

   azd up

   While provisioning, you might be asked to enter environment name, Azure subscription and location.

Run apps locally

1. Make sure you're at the repository root.

   cd $REPOSITORY_ROOT

2. Run Aspire.

   aspire run --project ./src/MafStarterPack.AppHost

Resources

• Microsoft Agent Framework
• Microsoft Foundry
• Microsoft Foundry Hosted Agents
• Model Context Protocol (MCP)
• Aspire