Web App Frontend for Foundry

[hayescode]

Technical Feedback

Has Microsoft considered providing a user UI for Azure Agents? My company uses Chainlit and Streamlit today, but with all of these new capabilities like multi-agent, MCP, long-running task agents, etc. we're looking for something that can handle this. Neither Chainlit/Streamlit can handle this so I think there's a big opportunity here for Microsoft to drive adoption. Especially if there's a python backend so it's highly accessible. Something that looks/feels exactly like ChatGPT would be AMAZING 😍

Desired Outcome

A highly customizable open-source frontend built on top of Foundry for users.

Current Workaround

All Foundry customers custom build their own frontend. There's autogen studio but it's developer focused (but has a lot of great functionality like agent team building)

[amynic]

Hi @hayescode - not sure we have a specific web front end for every Foundry agent, but thank you for the suggestion - is this mainly for testing purposes and fast experimentation - if so I wonder if the AI templates are a good fit for your ask? https://azure.github.io/ai-app-templates/

You can access them in the portal here and there are ones for multi-agent architectures

This example has a test web front end that functions with a multi-agent architecture https://github.com/microsoft/Multi-Agent-Custom-Automation-Engine-Solution-Accelerator

[hayescode]

Thanks @amynic . I'm thinking about an internal UI for actual users. Where they can create/share teams of agents that we create in Foundry. There is a fast pace of progress in the LLMs and backend architecture, but the industry as a whole doesn't really have any good frontends for users and agent managers to actually use it. We have to custom make the frontend and with the rapid progress in the backend we're always lagging behind. I think there is a big opportunity for Microsoft to give Azure AI Agents a really nice and flexible frontend like ChatGPT, long running tasks, even autogenstudio team maker.

Just throwing this out there that there is broad demand for this especially as the industry gets more bespoke and custom like azure agents. The main frontends available are streamlit and Chainlit, neither of which handle multi-agent, teams, or many of your new features.

[amynic]

Great insights thank you for sharing - I am wondering if our recent announcement at Microsoft Build is of interest: The Agent Store https://devblogs.microsoft.com/microsoft365dev/introducing-the-agent-store-build-publish-and-discover-agents-in-microsoft-365-copilot/

Very new and if you think it something that could help I can find an expert to jump in here 👍

[hayescode]

@amynic A big opportunity just opened up on this. Chainlit is discontinuing maintenance. Lots of developers use this, and lots of Microsoft MVPs too judging by how many blog posts use Chainlit in the official Azure AI Blog.

https://github.com/Chainlit/chainlit

The Chainlit founders are looking for new maintainers. A sleek and easy to use frontend for all of the great capabilities now offered by Foundry would go a long way towards adoption! Is there any interest from Microsoft?

[amynic]

Thank you for sharing @hayescode - let me share your thread around some teams internally for awareness

@gloveboxes - I know you an active user and fan of chainlit, see above

[yasonk]

I guess it is an opportunity for any company to pick up such a high quality project. Would be a no brainer for Microsoft to take over or maybe help with funding the original creators so that they don't give up :)