Generative AI for Beginners .NET - A Course

Practical lessons teaching you how to build Generative AI applications in .NET

Welcome to Generative AI for Beginners .NET, the hands-on course for .NET developers diving into the world of Generative AI!

This isn’t your typical “here’s some theory, good luck” course. This repository is all about real-world applications and live coding to empower .NET developers to take full advantage of Generative AI.

This is hands-on, practical, and designed to be fun!

Don't forget to star (🌟) this repo to find it easier later.

➡️Get your own copy by Forking this repo and find it next in your own repositories.

✨ What's New

We're constantly improving this course with the latest AI tools, models, and practical samples:

• 🤖 GitHub Copilot SDK with BYOK — new sample (October 2026)

  Use the GitHub Copilot SDK from .NET with your own model deployment hosted in Microsoft Foundry or Azure OpenAI. The sample shows the minimal BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) setup: routing inference through a ProviderConfig, authenticating with AzureCliCredential or an API key, and sending a single model request with tools and skills disabled.

  👉 Explore the Copilot SDK BYOK sample

• 🖥️ Local AI with Foundry Local — 10 samples (August 2026)

  Run Generative AI models locally from .NET using Microsoft Foundry Local. Ten production-ready samples demonstrate chat, streaming, practical scenarios, audio transcription, agent tools, and live speech-to-text—including multilingual transcription with automatic language detection and explicit locale selection—all with zero cloud costs and full offline capability.

  👉 Explore the Foundry Local Samples

• 🚀 Microsoft Agent Framework v1.0 GA (April 2026)

  All 28 MAF samples upgraded from preview to stable v1.0 packages. This includes a breaking change: Microsoft.Agents.AI.AzureAI renamed to Microsoft.Agents.AI.Foundry.

  2 new Hosted Agent scenarios — deploy containerized agents to Azure Foundry Agent Service:

  • MAF-HostedAgent-01-TimeZone — Basic hosted agent with timezone tool
  • MAF-HostedAgent-02-MultiAgent — Multi-agent Research Assistant workflow

  Multi-agent workflows, streaming, persistence, and MCP all production-ready.

  👉 Official GA Release | Foundry Agent Service GA

• 🚀 Microsoft Agent Framework Reaches Release Candidate!

  Microsoft Agent Framework has reached Release Candidate (1.0.0-rc1) — a framework for building agents and multi-agent systems in .NET. Our samples are being migrated to the RC APIs. In the meantime, explore 25+ Agent Framework samples covering console apps, web chat, multi-agent workflows, and Foundry integration.

  👉 Explore the Agent Framework Samples

• 🧪 Optional provider-specific samples

  Additional provider-specific samples remain available in the repo, including Claude-via-Foundry integrations and legacy video-generation experiments. They are useful reference material, but they are not part of the current recommended beginner-to-advanced learning path.

  👉 Browse the MAF samples and CoreSamples

View all previous updates in our What's New archive

🚀 Introduction

Generative AI is transforming software development, and .NET is no exception. This course aims to simplify the journey by offering:

• Short 5-10 minute videos for each lesson.
• Fully functional .NET code samples you can run and explore.
• Integration with tools, including GitHub Codespaces for seamless setup and fast time-to-code. You can use Azure OpenAI Services / Microsoft Foundry or Ollama for local model hosting.

You'll learn how to implement Generative AI into .NET projects, from basic text generation to building full-fledged solutions using Azure OpenAI Services and local models with Ollama.

📦 Each Lesson Includes

• Short Video: A quick overview of the lesson (5-10 minutes).
• Complete Code Samples: Fully functional and ready to run.
• Step-by-Step Guidance: Simple instructions to help you learn and implement the concepts.
• Deep Dive References: This course focuses on the practical implementation of GenAI, to get deeper into the theoretical we also provide links to explanations in Generative AI for Beginners - A Course when needed.

🗃️ Lessons

🌐 Multi-Language Support

Note: All translations were updated to match the original content on 2025-06-24. See PR #161 for details.

🛠️ What You Need

To get started, you'll need:

1. A GitHub account (free is fine!) to fork this entire repo to your own GitHub account.

2. GitHub Codespaces enabled for instant coding environments. You can enable GitHub Codespaces in your repository settings. Learn more about GitHub Codespaces here.

3. Create your copy by Forking this repo, or use the Fork button at the top of this page.

4. A basic understanding of .NET development. Learn more about .NET here.

5. Azure Developer CLI (azd) — Install here (required for automated Azure setup)

6. An Azure account — Create a free account here (a free account works!)

And that's it.

We've designed this course to be as low-friction as possible. We make use of the following to help you get started quickly:

• Run in GitHub Codespaces: With one click, you'll get a pre-configured environment to test and explore the lessons.
• Use Azure OpenAI / Microsoft Foundry: Access powerful AI models through Azure for production-ready scenarios.

Then when you're ready to expand we also have guides for:

• Using Ollama to run models locally on your hardware for enhanced privacy and control.

🚀 Quick Start with Azure

Automated Setup (Recommended)

For first-time Azure users, we provide an automated setup script that deploys all necessary resources:

# Navigate to the repository root
cd Generative-AI-for-beginners-dotnet

# Run the setup script
./setup.ps1

This will:

• ✅ Deploy Azure OpenAI resources (gpt-5-mini, text-embedding-3-small)
• ✅ Create necessary storage and support services
• ✅ Configure .NET User Secrets automatically
• ✅ Display your Azure OpenAI endpoint and credentials

For detailed instructions, see Azure Resource Setup Guide.

Manual Setup for Existing Azure Accounts

If you already have an Azure OpenAI account and the models deployed, configure secrets directly:

# Set shared secrets (used by all samples)
dotnet user-secrets set --id genai-beginners-dotnet "AzureOpenAI:Endpoint" "https://.openai.azure.com/"
dotnet user-secrets set --id genai-beginners-dotnet "AzureOpenAI:Deployment" "gpt-5-mini"
dotnet user-secrets set --id genai-beginners-dotnet "AzureOpenAI:EmbeddingDeployment" "text-embedding-3-small"

Then navigate to any sample and run:

cd samples/CoreSamples/BasicChat-01MEAI
dotnet run app.cs

Note: Azure OpenAI samples use az login for authentication. Run az login before running any Azure sample.

For detailed manual setup options, see Azure Resource Setup Guide.

🧹 Resource Cleanup

When you're done with the course, clean up Azure resources to avoid ongoing charges:

./cleanup.ps1

This will:

• Delete all Azure resources
• Clear local configuration
• Remove User Secrets

Learn more in Azure Resource Setup Guide - Cleanup.

🤝 Want to Help?

Contributions are welcome! Here's how you can help:

• Report issues or bugs in the repo.

• Improve existing code samples or add new ones, fork this repo and propose some changes!

• Suggest additional lessons or enhancements.

• Do you have suggestions or found spelling or code errors?, create a pull request

Check the CONTRIBUTING.MD file for details on how to get involved.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🌐 Other Courses

We have a lot of other content to help your learning journey. Check out:

Generative AI Series

Core Learning

Getting Help

If you get stuck or have any questions about building AI apps, join:

If you have product feedback or errors while building visit: