Dapr SDK for .NET

Build durable workflows, actors, jobs, pub/sub messaging, state management and AI agents in .NET with Dapr.

The Dapr SDK for .NET lets you:

• Write durable, long-running workflows in plain C# with Dapr Workflow
• Interact with Dapr applications through a Dapr client: service invocation, pub/sub, state, secrets, configuration, bindings and more
• Schedule jobs, use distributed locks, and encrypt and decrypt data
• Call large language models and build agents with Dapr AI
• Build routes and controllers in ASP.NET Core
• Implement the Virtual Actor model, based on the actor design pattern

This SDK can run locally, in a container, and in any distributed systems environment.

Getting started

Install the client and the workflow packages from nuget.org:

dotnet add package Dapr.Client
dotnet add package Dapr.Workflow

You also need the Dapr CLI and an initialized Dapr environment to run your application next to a Dapr sidecar.

Then read:

• the Dapr .NET SDK documentation
• the Dapr Workflow overview and the .NET workflow guide

Packages

We publish these NuGet packages to nuget.org for each release. The library packages target .NET 10 and .NET 11. The analyzer and generator packages run inside the compiler at build time.

Package	Use it to
Dapr.Client	Call the Dapr APIs: service invocation, pub/sub, state, secrets, configuration, bindings
Dapr.AspNetCore	Integrate Dapr with ASP.NET Core routes, controllers and pub/sub subscriptions
Dapr.Workflow	Author and run durable workflows
Dapr.Actors	Implement and call virtual actors
Dapr.Actors.AspNetCore	Host actors in ASP.NET Core
Dapr.Actors.Generators	Generate strongly typed actor clients
Dapr.Actors.Analyzers	Catch common actor registration and usage mistakes at build time
Dapr.Actors.Next	Develop actors with the newer actors SDK
Dapr.AI	Call large language models through the Dapr Conversation API
Dapr.AI.A2A	Connect agents with the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol
Dapr.AI.Microsoft.Extensions	Use Dapr AI through Microsoft.Extensions.AI
Dapr.Jobs	Schedule jobs
Dapr.Jobs.Analyzers	Catch common jobs registration mistakes at build time
Dapr.Messaging	Publish and subscribe through Dapr pub/sub components
Dapr.StateManagement	Use typed state management clients
Dapr.SecretsManagement	Use typed secret store clients
Dapr.Extensions.Configuration	Load secrets and configuration into Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration
Dapr.BinaryStore	Store and stream binary data
Dapr.Cryptography	Encrypt and decrypt data
Dapr.DistributedLock	Acquire distributed locks
Dapr.Metadata	Read sidecar metadata
Dapr.Search	Index and query documents (alpha API)
Dapr.Vector	Store and query vector embeddings (alpha API)
Dapr.Testcontainers	Run Dapr in integration tests with Testcontainers
Dapr.Testcontainers.Xunit	Use Dapr.Testcontainers from xUnit

The repo also builds Dapr.Common and Dapr.Protos. They hold types shared by the packages above and are not intended for direct use.

Documentation

The docs for the Dapr .NET SDK can be found on the Dapr docs site.

Examples

The examples folder has examples to get you up and running with the Dapr .NET SDK, including:

• Workflow examples: task chaining, fan-out/fan-in, external events, child workflows, retries, versioning and more
• AI examples: the Conversation API and Microsoft.Extensions.AI integration

Contributing

Before you open a pull request, read the .NET SDK contribution guide and CONTRIBUTING.md.

Prerequisites

Each project is a normal C# project. The repo's global.json pins the .NET 10 SDK (10.0.100 or a later feature band), which you need to build, test, and generate NuGet packages. The libraries target .NET 10 and .NET 11; to build for .NET 11, install its SDK and set DaprEnableNet11=true.

macOS/Linux:

On macOS or Linux we recommend Visual Studio Code with the C# Dev Kit extension. See here for a getting started guide for VS Code and .NET. JetBrains Rider also works.

Windows:

On Windows, we recommend the latest Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2022 does not support the .NET 10 SDK, so use Visual Studio 2026 or later. It sets you up with all the .NET build tools and opens the solution files. Community Edition is free and can be used to build everything here.

Make sure you update Visual Studio to the most recent release.

Build

To build everything and generate NuGet packages, run dotnet cli commands. Binaries and NuGet packages will be dropped in a bin directory at the repo root.

# Build sdk, samples and tests.
dotnet build -c Debug  # for release, -c Release

# Run unit-test
dotnet test

# Generate nuget packages in /bin/Debug/nugets
dotnet pack

Each project can also be built individually directly through the CLI or your editor/IDE. You can open the solution file all.slnx in repo root to load all sdk, samples and test projects.

Using NuGet packages built locally in your project

<RepoRoot> is the path where you cloned this repository. NuGet packages are dropped under /bin/<Debug|Release>/nugets when you build locally.

# Add Dapr.Actors nuget package
dotnet add package Dapr.Actors -s <RepoRoot>/bin/<Debug|Release>/nugets

# Add Dapr.Actors.AspNetCore nuget package
dotnet add package Dapr.Actors.AspNetCore -s <RepoRoot>/bin/<Debug|Release>/nugets