AI Workspace

Definition

The AI Workspace pattern provides named, per-tenant AI provider configurations resolved at runtime through a central factory. It is the IHttpClientFactory pattern applied to AI clients: each named workspace encapsulates a provider (OpenAI, AzureOpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama), model selection, API credentials, and usage limits. Callers request a workspace by name; the factory resolves the correct IChatClient and IEmbeddingGenerator transparently.

This decouples application logic from the choice of provider — switching a tenant from GPT-4o to Claude requires only a configuration change, not code change.

Diagram

flowchart TD
    APP[Application handler] --> FAC[IAIChatClientFactory]

    subgraph Factory resolution
        FAC --> WSCFG[WorkspaceConfiguration\nper-tenant DB row]
        WSCFG --> PROV{Provider?}
        PROV -- OpenAI --> OAI[Granit.AI.OpenAI\nIChatClient]
        PROV -- AzureOpenAI --> AOAI[Granit.AI.AzureOpenAI\nIChatClient]
        PROV -- Anthropic --> ANT[Granit.AI.Anthropic\nIChatClient]
        PROV -- Ollama --> OLL[Granit.AI.Ollama\nIChatClient]
    end

    OAI --> CHAT[IChatClient]
    AOAI --> CHAT
    ANT --> CHAT
    OLL --> CHAT

    CHAT --> RESULT[Typed response]

Implementation in Granit

Granit.AI registers IAIChatClientFactory via AddGranitAI(). Provider packages register their factory implementations (e.g., AddGranitAIOpenAI()).

Core interface

public interface IAIChatClientFactory
{
    Task<AIWorkspace> CreateAsync(
        string workspaceId,
        CancellationToken ct = default);
}

public sealed record AIWorkspace(
    IChatClient Chat,
    IEmbeddingGenerator<string, Embedding<float>>? Embeddings,
    AIWorkspaceOptions Options);

Workspace configuration

Workspaces are defined per application (or per tenant) in appsettings.json or in the database via Granit.AI.EntityFrameworkCore:

{
  "AI": {
    "Workspaces": {
      "default": {
        "Provider": "OpenAI",
        "Model": "gpt-4o",
        "EmbeddingModel": "text-embedding-3-small"
      },
      "compliance": {
        "Provider": "AzureOpenAI",
        "Endpoint": "https://my-eu.openai.azure.com/",
        "Deployment": "gpt-4o-eu",
        "EmbeddingModel": "text-embedding-3-large"
      },
      "local-dev": {
        "Provider": "Ollama",
        "Model": "llama3.2"
      }
    }
  }
}

Usage

public class SummaryService(IAIChatClientFactory factory)
{
    public async Task<string> SummarizeAsync(
        string text, string tenantWorkspaceId, CancellationToken ct)
    {
        var workspace = await factory.CreateAsync(tenantWorkspaceId, ct);

        var response = await workspace.Chat.CompleteAsync(
        [
            new ChatMessage(ChatRole.System, "Summarize the following text in 3 bullet points."),
            new ChatMessage(ChatRole.User, text),
        ], cancellationToken: ct);

        return response.Message.Text ?? string.Empty;
    }
}

Multi-tenancy integration

When Granit.MultiTenancy is registered, IAIChatClientFactory resolves the workspace configuration for the current tenant automatically — overriding the application-level default with a tenant-specific provider or model.

Module setup

[DependsOn(typeof(GranitAIModule))]
[DependsOn(typeof(GranitAIOpenAIModule))]   // add providers as needed
[DependsOn(typeof(GranitAIAzureOpenAIModule))]
public class AppModule : GranitModule { }

Reference files

File	Role
`src/Granit.AI/IAIChatClientFactory.cs`	Factory interface
`src/Granit.AI/AIWorkspace.cs`	Resolved workspace record
`src/Granit.AI/GranitAIOptions.cs`	Top-level options with workspace dictionary
`src/Granit.AI.EntityFrameworkCore/`	DB-persisted workspace configurations

Rationale

Problem	AI Workspace solution
Hard-coded provider in application code	Named workspaces resolved at runtime
Same provider for all tenants	Per-tenant workspace override
API key management scattered across services	Centralized in workspace config + Vault
Switching provider requires code change	Configuration-only change
Test isolation	Inject `Ollama` workspace in tests, `OpenAI` in production