Azure OpenAI ChatCompletion Agents

Getting Started

Add the required NuGet packages to your project.

dotnet add package Azure.AI.OpenAI --prerelease
dotnet add package Azure.Identity
dotnet add package Microsoft.Agents.AI.OpenAI --prerelease

Creating an Azure OpenAI ChatCompletion Agent

As a first step you need to create a client to connect to the Azure OpenAI service.

using System;
using Azure.AI.OpenAI;
using Azure.Identity;
using Microsoft.Agents.AI;
using OpenAI;

AzureOpenAIClient client = new AzureOpenAIClient(
    new Uri("https://<myresource>.openai.azure.com"),
    new AzureCliCredential());

Azure OpenAI supports multiple services that all provide model calling capabilities. We need to pick the ChatCompletion service to create a ChatCompletion based agent.

var chatCompletionClient = client.GetChatClient("gpt-4o-mini");

Finally, create the agent using the CreateAIAgent extension method on the ChatCompletionClient.

AIAgent agent = chatCompletionClient.CreateAIAgent(
    instructions: "You are good at telling jokes.",
    name: "Joker");
// Invoke the agent and output the text result.
Console.WriteLine(await agent.RunAsync("Tell me a joke about a pirate."));

Agent Features

Function Tools

You can provide custom function tools to Azure OpenAI ChatCompletion agents:

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using Azure.AI.OpenAI;
using Azure.Identity;
using Microsoft.Agents.AI;
using Microsoft.Extensions.AI;
using OpenAI;

var endpoint = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT") ?? throw new InvalidOperationException("AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT is not set.");
var deploymentName = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("AZURE_OPENAI_DEPLOYMENT_NAME") ?? "gpt-4o-mini";

[Description("Get the weather for a given location.")]
static string GetWeather([Description("The location to get the weather for.")] string location)
    => $"The weather in {location} is cloudy with a high of 15°C.";

// Create the chat client and agent, and provide the function tool to the agent.
AIAgent agent = new AzureOpenAIClient(
    new Uri(endpoint),
    new AzureCliCredential())
     .GetChatClient(deploymentName)
     .CreateAIAgent(instructions: "You are a helpful assistant", tools: [AIFunctionFactory.Create(GetWeather)]);

// Non-streaming agent interaction with function tools.
Console.WriteLine(await agent.RunAsync("What is the weather like in Amsterdam?"));

Streaming Responses

Get responses as they are generated using streaming:

AIAgent agent = chatCompletionClient.CreateAIAgent(
    instructions: "You are good at telling jokes.",
    name: "Joker");

// Invoke the agent with streaming support.
await foreach (var update in agent.RunStreamingAsync("Tell me a joke about a pirate."))
{
    Console.Write(update);
}

Using the Agent

The agent is a standard AIAgent and supports all standard AIAgent operations.

See the Agent getting started tutorials for more information on how to run and interact with agents.

Configuration

Environment Variables

Before using Azure OpenAI ChatCompletion agents, you need to set up these environment variables:

export AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT="https://<myresource>.openai.azure.com"
export AZURE_OPENAI_CHAT_DEPLOYMENT_NAME="gpt-4o-mini"

Optionally, you can also set:

export AZURE_OPENAI_API_VERSION="2024-10-21"  # Default API version
export AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY="<your-api-key>"  # If not using Azure CLI authentication

Installation

Add the Agent Framework package to your project:

pip install agent-framework

Getting Started

Authentication

Azure OpenAI agents use Azure credentials for authentication. The simplest approach is to use AzureCliCredential after running az login:

from azure.identity import AzureCliCredential

credential = AzureCliCredential()

Creating an Azure OpenAI ChatCompletion Agent

Basic Agent Creation

The simplest way to create an agent is using the AzureOpenAIChatClient with environment variables:

import asyncio
from agent_framework.azure import AzureOpenAIChatClient
from azure.identity import AzureCliCredential

async def main():
    agent = AzureOpenAIChatClient(credential=AzureCliCredential()).create_agent(
        instructions="You are good at telling jokes.",
        name="Joker"
    )

    result = await agent.run("Tell me a joke about a pirate.")
    print(result.text)

asyncio.run(main())

Explicit Configuration

You can also provide configuration explicitly instead of using environment variables:

import asyncio
from agent_framework.azure import AzureOpenAIChatClient
from azure.identity import AzureCliCredential

async def main():
    agent = AzureOpenAIChatClient(
        endpoint="https://<myresource>.openai.azure.com",
        deployment_name="gpt-4o-mini",
        credential=AzureCliCredential()
    ).create_agent(
        instructions="You are good at telling jokes.",
        name="Joker"
    )

    result = await agent.run("Tell me a joke about a pirate.")
    print(result.text)

asyncio.run(main())

Agent Features

Function Tools

You can provide custom function tools to Azure OpenAI ChatCompletion agents:

import asyncio
from typing import Annotated
from agent_framework.azure import AzureOpenAIChatClient
from azure.identity import AzureCliCredential
from pydantic import Field

def get_weather(
    location: Annotated[str, Field(description="The location to get the weather for.")],
) -> str:
    """Get the weather for a given location."""
    return f"The weather in {location} is sunny with a high of 25°C."

async def main():
    agent = AzureOpenAIChatClient(credential=AzureCliCredential()).create_agent(
        instructions="You are a helpful weather assistant.",
        tools=get_weather
    )

    result = await agent.run("What's the weather like in Seattle?")
    print(result.text)

asyncio.run(main())

Streaming Responses

Get responses as they are generated using streaming:

import asyncio
from agent_framework.azure import AzureOpenAIChatClient
from azure.identity import AzureCliCredential

async def main():
    agent = AzureOpenAIChatClient(credential=AzureCliCredential()).create_agent(
        instructions="You are a helpful assistant."
    )

    print("Agent: ", end="", flush=True)
    async for chunk in agent.run_stream("Tell me a short story about a robot"):
        if chunk.text:
            print(chunk.text, end="", flush=True)
    print()

asyncio.run(main())

Using the Agent

The agent is a standard BaseAgent and supports all standard agent operations.

See the Agent getting started tutorials for more information on how to run and interact with agents.