Posts Tagged ‘api’
[NDCOslo2024] Develop AI Agents with Semantic Kernel – Jakob Ehn
In the vanguard of generative paradigms, where language models orchestrate outcomes autonomously, Jakob Ehn, a seasoned solutions architect at Atea, illuminates Semantic Kernel’s symphony. A Microsoft MVP with a penchant for Azure and AI, Jakob unveils this open-source orchestrator—born in Microsoft’s copilot crucible—as a conduit for infusing intelligence into imperatives. His tutorial, threaded with live enactments, empowers .NET denizens to conjure agents that deliberate, delegate, and deliver, transcending prompts to proactive pursuits.
Jakob ignites with LLMs’ leap: from GPT’s generative gloss to agentic autonomy, where kernels coordinate calls, chaining capabilities contextually. Semantic Kernel, polyglot and potent, abstracts APIs into plugins, planners plot paths, memories mint moments—crafting copilots that converse, compute, and conclude sans ceaseless coding.
Foundations of Fusion: Kernel Configurations and Plugins
Semantic Kernel’s scaffold: a kernel encapsulating services—embeddings, chat completions—interfacing IConnectors for OpenAI or Azure. Jakob blueprints: var builder = Kernel.CreateBuilder(); builder.AddAzureOpenAIChatCompletion(…), yielding a kernel primed for prompts.
Plugins propel: native .NET assemblies or OpenAPI schemas, exposing functions as facets. Jakob instantiates: a weather plugin with GetForecastAsync, invoked via kernel.InvokeAsync. Semantic functions, YAML-yielded, infuse prompts with placeholders: “Current weather in {location}?”—blending blueprints with brains.
Memories memorialize: volatile or vectorized, persisting precedents for pertinence. Jakob’s vector store—Chroma—embeds episodes, retrieving resonances via similarity searches, enriching responses with recency.
Planners and Agents: Autonomous Assemblies
Planners pioneer paths: Sequential, Stepwise, or Action—dissecting directives into doables. Jakob’s Action planner: given “Book a flight,” it inventories functions—search, reserve—sequencing sans stalemates. Handles, he highlights, hallucination hurdles, grounding goals in grapples.
Agents amplify: collaborative cohorts, each expert in ethos—developer drafts, organizer oversees. Jakob’s ensemble: a proposal pipeline, where agents iterate abstracts, incorporating critiques conversationally. Semantic functions script sagas: “Revise to {limit} words, include {term}”—looping lucidly.
His demo: a conference copilot, soliciting sessions, surfacing summaries—agents alchemizing APIs into anecdotes.
Horizons and Hurdles: Refinements and Realities
Jakob tempers triumph: kernels kindle complexity—prompt precision, plugin parity. Yet, prospects gleam: multi-modal melds, enterprise embeddings. His behest: experiment, embracing Semantic Kernel’s scaffold to sculpt sentient solutions.
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[KotlinConf2019] Ktor for Mobile Developers: Conquering the Server with Dan Kim
For many mobile developers, the thought of venturing into server-side development can be daunting, often perceived as a realm of unfamiliar languages, complex frameworks, and different programming paradigms. Dan Kim, an experienced developer, aimed to demystify this process at KotlinConf 2019 with his talk, “Ktor for Mobile Developers: Fear the server no more!”. He showcased Ktor, a Kotlin-based framework for building asynchronous servers and clients, as an accessible and powerful tool for mobile developers looking to create backend components for their applications. The official website for Ktor is ktor.io.
Dan Kim’s session was designed to demonstrate how existing Kotlin knowledge could be leveraged to easily build server-side applications with Ktor. He promised a practical, real-world example, walking attendees through everything needed to get a server up and running: authentication, data retrieval, data posting, and deployment, ultimately aiming to give mobile developers the confidence to build their own backend services.
Introducing Ktor: Simplicity and Power in Kotlin
Ktor is a framework built by JetBrains, designed from the ground up with Kotlin and coroutines in mind, making it inherently asynchronous and well-suited for building scalable network applications. Dan Kim introduced Ktor’s core concepts, such as its flexible pipeline architecture, routing capabilities, and features for handling HTTP requests and responses. A key appeal of Ktor for mobile developers is that it allows them to stay within the Kotlin ecosystem, using a language and paradigms they are already familiar with from Android development.
The presentation would have highlighted Ktor’s ease of use and minimal boilerplate. Unlike some larger, more opinionated server-side frameworks, Ktor offers a more unopinionated and lightweight approach, allowing developers to choose and configure only the features they need. This can include functionalities like authentication, content negotiation (e.g., for JSON or XML), templating engines, and session management, all installable as “features” or plugins within a Ktor application.
Building a Real-World Server-Side Component
The core of Dan Kim’s talk was a hands-on demonstration of building a server-side component. He aimed to build a RESTful API and a web application, complete with authentication, and deploy it to Google Cloud, all within an impressively small amount of code (around 350 lines, as he mentioned). This practical example would have covered essential aspects of backend development:
* Routing: Defining endpoints to handle different HTTP methods (GET, POST, etc.) and URL paths.
* Request Handling: Processing incoming requests, extracting parameters, and validating data.
* Authentication: Implementing mechanisms to secure endpoints and manage user identity, possibly integrating with external services.
* Data Interaction: Showing how to get data from and post data to other services or a database (though the specifics of database interaction might vary).
* Deployment: Walking through the process of deploying the Ktor application to a cloud platform like Google Cloud, making the backend accessible to mobile clients.
By tackling these common server-side tasks using Ktor and Kotlin, Dan aimed to alleviate the fears mobile developers might have about backend development and demonstrate that they already possess many of the necessary skills.
Empowering Mobile Developers to Go Full-Stack
The overarching message of Dan Kim’s presentation was one of empowerment. He sought to show that with Ktor, mobile developers no longer need to “fear the server”. The framework provides a gentle learning curve and a productive environment for building robust and efficient backend services. This capability is increasingly valuable as mobile applications become more sophisticated and often require custom backend logic to support their features.
Dan Kim’s practical demonstration, from basic Ktor setup to cloud deployment, was intended to give attendees a clear understanding of how to connect their own server-side components to virtually any API. By simplifying the backend development process, Ktor enables mobile developers to potentially take on more full-stack responsibilities, leading to greater control over their application’s entire architecture and a faster development cycle for new features. He hoped his session would provide the confidence needed for mobile developers to start building their own server-side solutions with Kotlin and Ktor.