Aspire

Aspire Skill

This repository is set up to use Aspire. Aspire is an orchestrator for the entire application and will take care of configuring dependencies, building, and running the application. The resources that make up the application are defined in apphost.cs including application code and external dependencies.

General recommendations for working with Aspire

1. Before making any changes always run the apphost using aspire run and inspect the state of resources to make sure you are building from a known state.
2. Changes to the apphost.cs file will require a restart of the application to take effect.
3. Make changes incrementally and run the aspire application using the aspire run command to validate changes.
4. Use the Aspire MCP tools to check the status of resources and debug issues.

Running Aspire in agent environments

Agent environments may terminate foreground processes when a command finishes. Use detached mode:

aspire run --detach

This starts the AppHost in the background and returns immediately. The CLI will:

• Automatically stop any existing running instance before starting a new one
• Display a summary with the Dashboard URL and resource endpoints

Running with isolation

The --isolated flag starts the AppHost with randomized port numbers and its own copy of user secrets.

aspire run --detach --isolated

Isolation should be used when:

• When AppHosts are started by background agents
• When agents are using source code from a work tree
• There are port conflicts when starting the AppHost without isolation

Stopping the application

To stop a running AppHost:

aspire stop

This will scan for running AppHosts and stop them gracefully.

Relaunch rules

• If AppHost code changes, run aspire run --detach again to restart with the new code.
• Relaunching is safe: starting a new instance will automatically stop the previous instance.
• Do not attempt to keep multiple instances running.

Running the application

To run the application run the following command:

aspire run

If there is already an instance of the application running it will prompt to stop the existing instance. You only need to restart the application if code in apphost.cs is changed, but if you experience problems it can be useful to reset everything to the starting state.

Checking resources

To check the status of resources defined in the app model use the list resources tool. This will show you the current state of each resource and if there are any issues. If a resource is not running as expected you can use the execute resource command tool to restart it or perform other actions.

Listing integrations

IMPORTANT! When a user asks you to add a resource to the app model you should first use the list integrations tool to get a list of the current versions of all the available integrations. You should try to use the version of the integration which aligns with the version of the Aspire.AppHost.Sdk. Some integration versions may have a preview suffix. Once you have identified the correct integration you should always use the get integration docs tool to fetch the latest documentation for the integration and follow the links to get additional guidance.

Debugging issues

IMPORTANT! Aspire is designed to capture rich logs and telemetry for all resources defined in the app model. Use the following diagnostic tools when debugging issues with the application before making changes to make sure you are focusing on the right things.

1. list structured logs; use this tool to get details about structured logs.
2. list console logs; use this tool to get details about console logs.
3. list traces; use this tool to get details about traces.
4. list trace structured logs; use this tool to get logs related to a trace

Other Aspire MCP tools

1. select apphost; use this tool if working with multiple app hosts within a workspace.
2. list apphosts; use this tool to get details about active app hosts.

Playwright CLI

The Playwright CLI has been installed in this repository for browser automation. Use it to perform functional investigations of the resources defined in the app model as you work on the codebase. To get endpoints that can be used for navigation use the list resources tool. Run playwright-cli --help for available commands.

Updating the app host

The user may request that you update the Aspire apphost. You can do this using the aspire update command. This will update the apphost to the latest version and some of the Aspire specific packages in referenced projects, however you may need to manually update other packages in the solution to ensure compatibility. You can consider using the dotnet-outdated with the users consent. To install the dotnet-outdated tool use the following command:

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-outdated-tool

Deploying with Aspire

aspire deploy vs azd deploy

⚠️ NEVER mix azd deploy and aspire deploy in the same session. They manage Azure resources differently and combining them causes volume mount loss, orphaned resources, and broken deployments. Pick one deployment tool per environment and stick with it.

• aspire deploy — Aspire-native deployment to Azure Container Apps. Uses the Aspire manifest directly.
• azd deploy — Azure Developer CLI deployment. Uses azure.yaml + infra templates.

CRITICAL: azd deploy (or aspire deploy) exit code 0 means the upload succeeded, NOT that the system works. Always run post-deploy validation — see the e2e-testing skill and scripts/post-deploy-validate.sh.

PostgreSQL on Azure Container Apps

❌ Containerized Postgres on ACA does NOT work. Azure Container Apps uses Azure File Shares for persistent volumes, which don't support chmod/chown. PostgreSQL requires these POSIX operations and will fail to start with permission errors. This is a known platform limitation — see microsoft/aspire#9631.

✅ Always use AddAzurePostgresFlexibleServer for production deployments:

var dbUser = builder.AddParameter("dbUser");
var dbPassword = builder.AddParameter("dbPassword", secret: true);

var postgresServer = builder.AddAzurePostgresFlexibleServer("db")
    .WithPasswordAuthentication(dbUser, dbPassword)   // REQUIRED — see below
    .RunAsContainer(c => c                             // Local dev uses Docker
        .WithLifetime(ContainerLifetime.Persistent)
        .WithDataVolume());

var postgres = postgresServer.AddDatabase("sentencestudio");

Key points:

• .WithPasswordAuthentication(dbUser, dbPassword) is REQUIRED. Without it, Aspire defaults to Entra-only authentication, which causes SCRAM authentication errors from EF Core / Npgsql.
• .RunAsContainer() enables local development with Docker while using the managed Azure Postgres Flexible Server in production. This is the recommended dual-mode pattern.
• ContainerLifetime.Persistent keeps the local dev container alive across aspire run restarts so you don't lose local data between sessions.

Known aspire deploy Issues

• CLI 13.3.0-preview.1 timeout bug: aspire run --detach can timeout due to a backchannel socket hash mismatch. If you see timeout errors on detach, try running without --detach or update the CLI.
• ACA volume limitation (microsoft/aspire#9631): Containers that need POSIX filesystem operations (PostgreSQL, MongoDB) cannot use ACA's Azure File Share volumes. Use managed Azure services instead.

Persistent containers

IMPORTANT! Consider avoiding persistent containers early during development to avoid creating state management issues when restarting the app.

Aspire workload

IMPORTANT! The aspire workload is obsolete. You should never attempt to install or use the Aspire workload.

Aspire Documentation Tools

IMPORTANT! The Aspire MCP server provides tools to search and retrieve official Aspire documentation directly. Use these tools to find accurate, up-to-date information about Aspire features, APIs, and integrations:

1. list_docs: Lists all available documentation pages from aspire.dev. Returns titles, slugs, and summaries. Use this to discover available topics.

2. search_docs: Searches the documentation using keywords. Returns ranked results with titles, slugs, and matched content. Use this when looking for specific features, APIs, or concepts.

3. get_doc: Retrieves the full content of a documentation page by its slug. After using list_docs or search_docs to find a relevant page, pass the slug to get_doc to retrieve the complete documentation.

Recommended workflow for documentation

1. Use search_docs with relevant keywords to find documentation about a topic
2. Review the search results - each result includes a Slug that identifies the page
3. Use get_doc with the slug to retrieve the full documentation content
4. Optionally use the section parameter with get_doc to retrieve only a specific section

Official documentation

IMPORTANT! Always prefer official documentation when available. The following sites contain the official documentation for Aspire and related components

1. https://aspire.dev
2. https://learn.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspire
3. https://nuget.org (for specific integration package details)