AI

Dapr.AI provides a dedicated client for interacting with Dapr’s AI workloads from a .NET application. Today, Dapr provides the Conversational API to engage with large language models, and the DaprConversationClient is the entry point for sending prompts, configuring response formats, managing prompt cache retention, and reading token usage statistics.

For developers already working with the Microsoft.Extensions.AI ecosystem, the Dapr.AI.Microsoft.Extensions package implements IChatClient on top of the Dapr Conversation building block, so you can use Dapr as a backend for any IChatClient-compatible code, including tool and function calling.

Core concepts

• How to: Create and use Dapr AI Conversations in the .NET SDK: install the package, register the DaprConversationClient with dependency injection or build it manually, and try the samples.
• DaprConversationClient usage: lifetime management, builder configuration, environment variables, gRPC channel options, dependency injection overloads, sending conversation requests, JSON-schema response format, prompt cache retention, and token usage statistics.
• How to: Using Microsoft’s AI extensions with Dapr’s .NET Conversation SDK: register DaprChatClient as an IChatClient, send chat messages, use tool and function calling, and handle errors.

Next steps

• How to: Create and use Dapr AI Conversations in the .NET SDK
• DaprConversationClient usage
• Using Microsoft’s AI extensions with Dapr’s .NET Conversation SDK