2. Community & Setup

Join the Community

Azure AI Foundry Community — Discussion forums, events, and announcements
GitHub — Sample repos, SDK source, and issue tracking
Stack Overflow — Tag questions with azure-ai-foundry

Azure Subscription Setup

Create an Azure subscription (free tier works)
Navigate to Azure AI Foundry in the portal
Create a Hub resource (shared AI Search, Storage, Key Vault)
Create a Project within the Hub

SDK Installation

# Python
pip install azure-ai-projects azure-ai-inference azure-search-documents

# Node.js
npm install @azure/ai-projects @azure/ai-inference @azure/search-documents

# .NET
dotnet add package Azure.AI.Projects
dotnet add package Azure.AI.Inference

VSCode Extension

Install the Azure AI Foundry extension from the marketplace to browse models, deploy agents, and test RAG pipelines directly from your editor.

📘 Note: The Hub provides shared infrastructure (AI Search, Storage, Key Vault) across all projects. Create one Hub per team.

✏️ Exercise: Create a new Azure AI Foundry Hub and Project in your subscription. Install the Python SDK. Verify the setup by running pip list | findstr azure-ai.