OpenAIPromptExecutionSettings.Metadata Equivalent in Agent Framework?

[jbnidev]

Is there a way to pass additional information to an OpenAI instance similar to OpenAIPromptExecutionSettings.Metadata in Semantic Kernel?

NOTE: I tried passing AgentRunOptions with AdditionalProperties set to my old metadata settings when calling RunStreamingAsync(), but that does not work. I inspected the request on the server side and there is no trace of my settings, so apparently AgentRunOptions.AdditionalProperties is not what I need.

[moonbox3]

Adding @westey-m to help.

[westey-m]

@jbnidev, it is possible to customize the settings passed to the underlying service. Note that OpenAI has 3 different services for inference though with different settings types for each.

Via ChatOptions (the options type for the IChatClient that the ChatClientAgent is built on) you can pass a RawRepresentationFactory which would return the options type for the underlying service.

Here is an example of how to do this for the Responses service:
https://github.com/microsoft/agent-framework/blob/main/dotnet/samples/02-agents/FoundryAgents/FoundryAgents_Step15_ComputerUse/Program.cs#L78-L87

Note that ChatOptions with the custom RawRepresentationFactory can be passed via ChatClientAgentOptions when constructing the agent, or via ChatClientAgentRunOptions on a per run basis.

[jbnidev]

@westey-m,

Thank you for your response and especially the link to the example. That does appear to be exactly what I am asking about. However, I see no way to actually set the metadata. I tried:

#pragma warning disable OPENAI001
                    CreateResponseOptions responseCreationOptions = new()
                    {
                        TruncationMode = ResponseTruncationMode.Auto,
                        Metadata = systemPromptTemplateParams
                    };
#pragma warning restore OPENAI001

This gives

error CS0200: Property or indexer 'CreateResponseOptions.Metadata' cannot be assigned to -- it is read only

because Metadata has no setter.

There is a constructor that takes metadata as a parameter and assigns to Metadata, but that constructor is internal, and apparently deliberately so. Did I misunderstand your suggestion?

[westey-m]

@jbnidev, you are right, however the dictionary can be modified, so you should be able to add your values to it. e.g.

CreateResponseOptions responseCreationOptions = new()
{
    TruncationMode = ResponseTruncationMode.Auto
};
responseCreationOptions.Metadata.Add("key", "value");

Note that we do not own this library, but you can always create an issue in their repo to ask for an improved experience.

[jbnidev]

Thank you so much. I should have seen that approach. I can confirm that your recommendation works as advertised, allowing us to simply set values in Metadata as before.

Note that we do not own this library, but you can always create an issue in their repo to ask for an improved experience.

Honestly, I do not think this is a bad experience. In fact, it always struck me as surprising that OpenAIPromptExecutionSettings.Metadata was null by default instead of empty in our SK code. I think having an empty dictionary by default is better. What tripped me up was that I was migrating some existing (working) SK code, and I was expecting the new property to work the same way.

[westey-m]

You're welcome. Glad it helped!

One benefit of not having an empty dictionary by default is that it avoids an allocation. This is obviously more useful if the property is rarely used.