Task Agent - AI-Powered Task Management

An intelligent task management assistant built with Microsoft Agent Framework, Azure OpenAI, and .NET Aspire, demonstrating Clean Architecture, autonomous AI agents, and production-grade observability with Azure Content Safety protection.

🚀 Quick Start

# Navigate to the project
cd src

# Restore dependencies
dotnet restore

# Configure your Azure credentials in appsettings.Development.json
# Run with .NET Aspire (includes Aspire Dashboard)
dotnet run --project src/TaskAgent.AppHost

# Or run standalone
dotnet run --project src/services/TaskAgent/src/TaskAgent.WebApp

Development: Visit http://localhost:5000 for the app and https://localhost:17198 for Aspire Dashboard
Production: Observability data flows to Azure Application Insights automatically

✨ Features

💬 Natural Language Interface: Talk to your task manager like a person
🛡️ Multi-Layer Security: Azure Content Safety protection (Prompt Shield + Content Moderation)
📊 Production-Grade Observability: Full OpenTelemetry stack with .NET Aspire
✅ Complete CRUD: Create, read, update, and delete tasks
� Smart Analytics: Task summaries with filtering by status and priority
🎨 Beautiful Tables: Markdown-formatted responses with emojis
💡 Contextual Suggestions: Agent provides helpful next actions
🗄️ SQL Server Persistence: Entity Framework Core with LocalDB
🔍 Distributed Tracing: End-to-end request tracking with custom activity sources
📉 Custom Metrics: Real-time monitoring of AI agent operations

📊 Observability & Monitoring

This project implements production-grade observability using .NET Aspire and OpenTelemetry with a hybrid architecture:

Development Environment (Local)

Stack: OpenTelemetry → OTLP Exporter → Aspire Dashboard (https://localhost:17198)

Features:

📊 Real-time metrics visualization
🔍 Distributed tracing with automatic trace correlation
📝 Structured logging with log levels and scopes
🔗 Dependency mapping (Azure OpenAI, Content Safety, SQL Server)
🎯 Custom instrumentation for AI agent operations

Production Environment (Azure)

Stack: OpenTelemetry → Azure Monitor Exporter → Application Insights

Features:

📈 Performance monitoring and alerting
🗺️ Application Map with dependencies
🔥 Live metrics and real-time telemetry
📊 Custom dashboards and workbooks
🔔 Smart detection and anomaly alerts

Three Pillars of Observability

1️⃣ Metrics (Custom + Built-in)

Custom AI Agent Metrics:

Meter: "TaskAgent.Agent"

Counters:
- agent.requests         → Total requests to the agent
- agent.function_calls   → Function tool invocations
- agent.errors          → Error count by type

Histograms:
- agent.response.duration → Response time in milliseconds

Built-in Metrics (automatic):

ASP.NET Core instrumentation (HTTP requests, response times)
HTTP Client instrumentation (Azure OpenAI, Content Safety calls)
Runtime instrumentation (GC, thread pool, exceptions)

2️⃣ Distributed Tracing

Custom Activity Sources:

ActivitySource: "TaskAgent.Agent"

Spans:
- Agent.ProcessMessage    → End-to-end message processing
- Function.{FunctionName} → Individual function tool calls

Tags:
- thread.id              → Conversation thread identifier
- function.name          → Called function name
- message.length         → User message size
- response.length        → Agent response size

Built-in Traces (automatic):

ASP.NET Core HTTP requests
Entity Framework Core SQL queries (development only)
HTTP client calls to Azure services

3️⃣ Structured Logging

Configuration:

Formatted messages included
Log scopes enabled
Integration with OpenTelemetry
Automatic correlation with traces

Log Levels:

Information: Agent operations, function calls
Warning: Content safety blocks, validation failures
Error: Exceptions, service failures

Hybrid Telemetry Architecture

Smart Environment Detection:

// Automatically selects exporter based on configuration
if (OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT exists)
    → Use OTLP → Aspire Dashboard

if (APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING exists)
    → Use Azure Monitor → Application Insights

Security: SQL statement capture is disabled in production to prevent sensitive data leakage.

Service Discovery: HTTPS-only in production, HTTP + HTTPS in development.

🛡️ Content Safety

This application implements 2-layer defense using Azure AI Content Safety with parallel execution:

Layer 1: Prompt Shield

Detects prompt injection attacks (jailbreaks, instruction override, role manipulation)
REST API: /contentsafety/text:shieldPrompt (API version 2024-09-01)
Blocks malicious attempts to manipulate the AI system
Optimized: Trusts Azure's pre-trained model without system context (reduces false positives)

Layer 2: Content Moderation

Analyzes text for harmful content (Hate, Violence, Sexual, Self-Harm)
SDK: Azure AI Content Safety
Configurable severity thresholds (0-6 scale)

Architecture: Content safety checks run automatically via middleware before any AI processing.

Performance:

Parallel Execution: Both layers validate simultaneously using Task.WhenAll (~50% faster)
IHttpClientFactory: Named HttpClient for optimal connection pooling and DNS refresh
Response Time: ~200-400ms for safe prompts (vs ~400-800ms sequential)

Best Practices:

Generic conversational refusals (like ChatGPT) - no technical details exposed
Security violations render as normal bot messages
No error styling for content safety blocks

Testing: See docs/CONTENT_SAFETY.md for 75+ test cases, known limitations, and troubleshooting guide.

🏗️ Architecture

Built with Clean Architecture for maintainability and testability:

TaskAgent.Domain (Entities, Business Logic)
    ↓
TaskAgent.Application (Use Cases, Interfaces)
    ↓
TaskAgent.Infrastructure (Data Access, Azure Services)
    ↓
TaskAgent.WebApp (UI, Controllers, AI Agent)

Key Components:

Domain: TaskItem entity with business rules, Status/Priority enums
Application: DTOs (using record types), ITaskRepository, IThreadPersistenceService, 6 AI function tools
Infrastructure: TaskDbContext, TaskRepository, ContentSafetyService with HttpClientFactory, InMemoryThreadPersistenceService
Presentation: MVC controllers, Razor views, TaskAgentService, configuration validation extensions

Conversation Persistence:

Thread state serialized/deserialized across requests using AgentThread.Serialize()
IThreadPersistenceService abstraction for storage flexibility
In-memory implementation for single-server deployments
Production: Use Redis/SQL for multi-server scenarios

🛠️ Tech Stack

Technology	Purpose
.NET 9.0	Modern web framework
ASP.NET Core MVC	Web application
.NET Aspire	Cloud-native orchestration
OpenTelemetry	Observability framework
Entity Framework Core	Database ORM
SQL Server LocalDB	Data persistence
Microsoft Agent Framework	Autonomous AI agents
Azure OpenAI (GPT-4o-mini)	Language model
Azure AI Content Safety	Security & moderation
Bootstrap 5	Responsive UI
Marked.js	Markdown rendering

⚙️ Setup

Prerequisites

.NET 9.0 SDK
SQL Server LocalDB (included with Visual Studio)
Azure OpenAI resource with deployed model (GPT-4o-mini recommended)
Azure AI Content Safety resource
Azure Application Insights resource (for production)

Configuration

Development Environment

1. Update appsettings.Development.json:

{
  "AzureOpenAI": {
    "Endpoint": "https://your-openai-resource.openai.azure.com/",
    "ApiKey": "your-openai-api-key",
    "ModelDeployment": "gpt-4o-mini"
  },
  "ContentSafety": {
    "Endpoint": "https://your-contentsafety-resource.cognitiveservices.azure.com/",
    "ApiKey": "your-contentsafety-api-key",
    "HateThreshold": 2,
    "ViolenceThreshold": 2,
    "SexualThreshold": 2,
    "SelfHarmThreshold": 2
  }
}

2. Database (auto-created on first run, or manually):

cd src/services/TaskAgent/src
dotnet ef database update --project TaskAgent.Infrastructure --startup-project TaskAgent.WebApp

3. Run with Aspire (recommended):

dotnet run --project src/TaskAgent.AppHost

Application: https://localhost:5001
Aspire Dashboard: https://localhost:17198

Production Environment (Azure)

1. Update appsettings.Production.json:

{
  "AzureOpenAI": {
    "Endpoint": "https://your-openai-resource.openai.azure.com/",
    "ApiKey": "your-openai-api-key",
    "ModelDeployment": "gpt-4o-mini"
  },
  "ContentSafety": {
    "Endpoint": "https://your-contentsafety-resource.cognitiveservices.azure.com/",
    "ApiKey": "your-contentsafety-api-key",
    "HateThreshold": 2,
    "ViolenceThreshold": 2,
    "SexualThreshold": 2,
    "SelfHarmThreshold": 2
  },
  "APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING": "InstrumentationKey=your-key;IngestionEndpoint=https://...",
  "ConnectionStrings": {
    "DefaultConnection": "Server=tcp:your-server.database.windows.net,1433;Initial Catalog=TaskAgentDb;..."
  }
}

2. Deploy to Azure App Service using standard deployment methods.

🤖 AI Agent Capabilities

The Task Agent provides 6 function tools:

Function	Description
`CreateTask`	Create new tasks with title, description, priority
`ListTasks`	Show all tasks with optional filters
`GetTaskDetails`	Get detailed info about a specific task
`UpdateTask`	Modify task status or priority
`DeleteTask`	Remove tasks
`GetTaskSummary`	View statistics and analytics

Example Interactions:

You: Create a high priority task to review the quarterly report
Agent: ✅ Task created! ID: 1, Priority: High

You: Show me all my tasks
Agent: [Displays beautiful Markdown table with all tasks]
      💡 Suggestions: • Filter by priority • Update oldest task

You: Mark task 1 as Completed
Agent: ✅ Task updated! Status changed to Completed

🎨 Agent Features

Markdown Tables

Lists 2+ tasks in beautiful formatted tables with emojis:

Status: ⏳ Pending, 🔄 InProgress, ✅ Completed
Priority: 🟢 Low, 🟡 Medium, 🔴 High

Contextual Suggestions

Agent provides 1-2 smart suggestions after each operation:

After creating: "View all tasks" or "Create follow-up"
After listing: "Filter by priority" or "Update oldest task"
After completing: "View remaining tasks" or "Get summary"

Smart Insights

Detects many pending tasks → suggests prioritizing
Celebrates milestones → "🎉 Great! You've completed 5 tasks!"
Encourages progress

📂 Project Structure

TaskAgentWeb/
├── src/
│   ├── TaskAgent.AppHost/                         # .NET Aspire orchestration
│   │   ├── AppHost.cs                            # Aspire app host configuration
│   │   └── appsettings.json                      # Aspire settings
│   │
│   ├── TaskAgent.ServiceDefaults/                 # Shared observability configuration
│   │   └── ServiceDefaultsExtensions.cs          # OpenTelemetry setup
│   │
│   └── services/TaskAgent/src/
│       ├── TaskAgent.Domain/                      # Core business logic (NO dependencies)
│       │   ├── Entities/                         # TaskItem with business rules
│       │   ├── Enums/                            # TaskStatus, TaskPriority
│       │   └── Constants/                        # Domain constants
│       │
│       ├── TaskAgent.Application/                 # Use cases & interfaces
│       │   ├── DTOs/                             # Record types for immutability
│       │   ├── Functions/                        # 6 AI function tools
│       │   ├── Interfaces/                       # ITaskRepository, IContentSafetyService
│       │   └── Telemetry/                        # Custom metrics & activity sources
│       │       ├── AgentMetrics.cs               # Custom Meter
│       │       └── AgentActivitySource.cs        # Custom ActivitySource
│       │
│       ├── TaskAgent.Infrastructure/              # External concerns
│       │   ├── Data/                             # TaskDbContext, EF configurations
│       │   ├── Repositories/                     # Repository implementations
│       │   ├── Services/                         # ContentSafetyService, ThreadPersistence
│       │   └── InfrastructureServiceExtensions.cs # HttpClientFactory, DI
│       │
│       └── TaskAgent.WebApp/                      # Presentation layer
│           ├── Controllers/                       # ChatController, HomeController
│           ├── Services/                         # TaskAgentService (AI orchestration)
│           ├── Middleware/                       # ContentSafetyMiddleware
│           ├── Extensions/                       # Configuration validation
│           ├── Views/                            # Razor UI
│           ├── wwwroot/                          # Static assets
│           └── PresentationServiceExtensions.cs   # AI Agent registration
│
├── docs/                                          # Documentation
│   ├── screenshots/                              # Application screenshots
│   ├── architecture/                             # Architecture diagrams (planned)
│   └── CONTENT_SAFETY.md                         # Content Safety testing guide
│
└── scripts/                                       # PowerShell scripts
    ├── Analyze-Commits.ps1                       # Commit analysis tool
    └── config.json                               # Script configuration
│   ├── terraform.tfvars.example                  # Example configuration
│   ├── .gitignore                                # Exclude state files
│   └── README.md                                 # Terraform documentation
│
├── docs/                                          # Documentation
│   ├── screenshots/                              # Application & observability screenshots
│   ├── deployment/                               # Deployment guides
│   ├── architecture/                             # Architecture diagrams
│   └── CONTENT_SAFETY.md                         # Security testing guide
│
└── README.md                                      # This file

Key Architectural Decisions

Clean Architecture: Domain → Application → Infrastructure → WebApp (strict dependency flow)

Observability-First: OpenTelemetry instrumentation at every layer via ServiceDefaults

Hybrid Telemetry:

Development: OTLP → Aspire Dashboard
Production: Azure Monitor → Application Insights

Security: Content Safety middleware + HTTPS-only service discovery in production

🔒 Security

Content Safety

2-Layer Defense: Automatic Prompt Shield + Content Moderation
Fail-Secure: Blocks requests on Prompt Shield errors; Fail-Open on Content Moderation for availability
Optimized Detection: Prompt Shield uses pre-trained model (no system context) to reduce false positives
Performance: HttpClientFactory with Named HttpClient for connection pooling and DNS refresh
Immutable DTOs: Record types for thread-safety and proper equality semantics
Best Practices: ChatGPT-style generic refusals without exposing attack details
See: docs/CONTENT_SAFETY.md for 75+ test cases and troubleshooting

Application Security

Input Validation: EF Core parameterized queries prevent SQL injection
XSS Protection: DOMPurify sanitization on client-side
Configuration Validation: Startup checks for missing credentials
HTTPS Enforcement: Service discovery restricted to HTTPS in production
Secret Management: Never commit API keys - use Azure Key Vault in production
SQL Security: Database statement capture disabled in production

📸 Screenshots

.NET Aspire Dashboard (Development)

Real-time observability with traces, metrics, and logs

End-to-end request tracing with custom activity sources

AI agent performance metrics (requests, function calls, response time)

Azure Application Insights (Production)

Response time and dependency tracking

Production distributed tracing

� Related Articles

Comprehensive guides covering concepts, best practices, and step-by-step tutorials:

Building an AI Task Management Agent using Microsoft Agentic AI Framework
- Understanding the Microsoft Agent Framework
- Implementing autonomous AI agents with function calling
- Clean Architecture implementation for AI applications
- Creating Azure OpenAI resources and configuration
Securing your AI Task Agent with Azure AI Content Safety
- Two-layer defense architecture (Prompt Shield + Content Moderation)
- Setting up Azure AI Content Safety resources
- Implementing parallel security checks for optimal performance
- Best practices for AI security without exposing vulnerabilities
Real-Time Observability for AI Agents with .NET Aspire, Application Insights & OpenTelemetry
- Production-grade observability with OpenTelemetry
- Custom metrics and distributed tracing for AI agents
- Hybrid telemetry architecture (local + cloud)
- Creating Application Insights resources and configuration

�📚 Documentation

Content Safety Guide - Security testing with 75+ test cases
Documentation Index - Full documentation structure

📖 License

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

What this means:

✅ Free to use for personal and commercial projects
✅ Free to modify and distribute
✅ Free to use in your own educational content
ℹ️ Just keep the copyright notice

Built with ❤️ using .NET 9, Microsoft Agent Framework, .NET Aspire, and Clean Architecture

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
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.github		.github
.vscode		.vscode
docs		docs
scripts		scripts
src		src
.gitignore		.gitignore
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md

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Task Agent - AI-Powered Task Management

🚀 Quick Start

✨ Features

📊 Observability & Monitoring

Development Environment (Local)

Production Environment (Azure)

Three Pillars of Observability

1️⃣ Metrics (Custom + Built-in)

2️⃣ Distributed Tracing

3️⃣ Structured Logging

Hybrid Telemetry Architecture

🛡️ Content Safety

Layer 1: Prompt Shield

Layer 2: Content Moderation

🏗️ Architecture

🛠️ Tech Stack

⚙️ Setup

Prerequisites

Configuration

Development Environment

Production Environment (Azure)

🤖 AI Agent Capabilities

🎨 Agent Features

Markdown Tables

Contextual Suggestions

Smart Insights

📂 Project Structure

Key Architectural Decisions

🔒 Security

Content Safety

Application Security

📸 Screenshots

.NET Aspire Dashboard (Development)

Azure Application Insights (Production)

� Related Articles

�📚 Documentation

📖 License

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