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Local Development Guide

Assistant Engine is built to run natively across Web, Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android — all from a single .NET 9 codebase. Whether you’re interested in extending its AI features, improving the UI, or building new developer tools, your contributions are welcome.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure your development environment is ready:

  • Visual Studio (recommended)
  • .NET 9 SDK installed

  • In the Visual Studio Installer, ensure the following workloads are enabled:

  • ASP.NET and web development

  • .NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI)

  • Ollama:

  • Connect to an existing Ollama server, or install Ollama locally

  • AI Templates: Install Microsoft’s AI project templates with:
dotnet new install Microsoft.Extensions.AI.Templates

Tip

Common setup issue: Make sure .NET Multi-platform App UI development is checked in the Visual Studio installer.

Setting Up Your Local Environment

  1. Clone the Repository Open a terminal and run:
git clone https://github.com/Assistant Engine/Assistant Engine.git
  1. Open in Visual Studio Open Assistant Engine.sln. You’ll see three main projects:
Project Description
Assistant Engine.Web Blazor-based web application interface.
Assistant Engine.UI Shared Razor Class Library (RCL) with core logic and UI components.
Assistant Engine.App .NET MAUI app (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android) with WebView2 hosting the Assistant Engine experience.

Run this once at the project root to restore workloads:

dotnet workload restore

  1. Run the Application

  2. To run the full cross-platform client: start Assistant Engine.App

  3. To run only the web interface: start Assistant Engine.Web

And that’s it — you’re ready to start building with Assistant Engine!

Next Steps