Without further ado, let’s dive into the highlights.<\/p>\n
\ud83d\udee0\ufe0f CLI quality-of-life improvements<\/h2>\n
Several enhancements make the CLI experience smoother:<\/p>\n
Channel persistence<\/strong>: When you run Automatic instance detection<\/strong>: Running No more hunting for orphaned processes!<\/p>\n The dashboard gets a dedicated Parameters<\/strong> tab on the Resources page, making it easier to view and manage configuration parameters without navigating away from resource details.<\/p>\n The GenAI visualizer also received several improvements:<\/p>\n In Aspire 13, we introduced the Dashboard MCP<\/a> – an HTTP-based server that lets AI assistants query your running application’s resources, logs, and traces. It was powerful, but required manual configuration with API keys and URLs.<\/p>\n Aspire 13.1 takes this further with a new stdio-based MCP<\/strong> via the CLI. The new The CLI MCP wraps the dashboard functionality and adds new tools for agentic development:<\/p>\n Imagine asking your AI assistant “Why is my API failing?” and having it actually check your logs and traces to give you real insights. Or asking it to add Redis to your project and having it know exactly which package to use and how to configure it.<\/p>\n A new Starter App (ASP.NET Core\/React)<\/strong> template provides a ready-to-use full-stack setup with an ASP.NET Core minimal API backend and a Vite-backed React frontend:<\/p>\n The template includes everything wired up and ready to go – just run Azure Functions stabilization<\/strong>: The Azure Functions<\/a> integration is now stable!<\/p>\n Azure App Service deployment slots<\/strong>: Deployment slots let you deploy new versions of your app to a staging environment, validate them, and then swap into production with zero downtime. The new Azure Managed Redis<\/strong>: Azure Cache for Redis has announced its retirement timeline for all SKUs, and we recommend moving your existing instances to Azure Managed Redis as soon as possible. In Aspire, we’ve deprecated In Aspire 13, we introduced automatic certificate trust for outbound requests – Python, Node.js, and containers could seamlessly make HTTPS calls to other services in your app. Aspire 13.1 completes the picture with TLS termination<\/strong> support for inbound traffic.<\/p>\n Containers like YARP<\/a>, Redis<\/a>, Keycloak<\/a>, and Uvicorn<\/a> can now serve HTTPS directly, with the ASP.NET Core developer certificate automatically configured. This means end-to-end HTTPS during local development without manual certificate setup.<\/p>\n Aspire 13.1 continues to build on the polyglot foundation of Aspire 13, with a particular focus on making AI coding agents productive members of your development team.<\/p>\n Ready to upgrade? It’s easy:<\/p>\n New to Aspire?<\/strong> Check out aspire.dev<\/a> for getting started guides, or dive right in:<\/p>\n Want more details?<\/strong> The complete release notes<\/a> cover everything, including migration guides and experimental features.<\/p>\n We’d love to hear what you think! Share feedback on GitHub<\/a>, join the conversation on Discord<\/a>, or connect with us on BlueSky<\/a>.<\/p>\n Happy holidays, and happy Aspirifying! \ud83c\udf84\ud83d\ude80<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Aspire 13.1 is here with CLI-based MCP for AI agents, dashboard improvements, Azure updates, and TLS termination support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1489,"featured_media":225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,51,7],"tags":[8,9,10,28],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-announcement","category-aspire-update","tag-ai","tag-aspire","tag-cli","tag-mcp"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":" Aspire 13.1 is here with CLI-based MCP for AI agents, dashboard improvements, Azure updates, and TLS termination support.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/aspire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/aspire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/aspire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/aspire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1489"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/aspire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/aspire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/aspire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/aspire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/aspire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/aspire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}aspire update --self<\/code> and select a channel, your selection is saved globally. Future aspire new<\/code> and aspire init<\/code> commands use this channel by default.<\/p>\naspire run<\/code> when an instance is already running? Aspire 13.1 detects it and offers to terminate:<\/p>\n\ud83d\udcca Dashboard improvements<\/h2>\n
![\"Resources](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/aspire\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/90\/2025\/12\/resources-parameters-view.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
![\"GenAI](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/aspire\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/90\/2025\/12\/genai-visualizer-tooldefinitions.png\")
<\/p>\n\ud83e\udd16 AI agents meet Aspire<\/h2>\n
aspire mcp init<\/code> command detects your development environment and configures everything automatically:<\/p>\naspire mcp init<\/code><\/pre>\nWhich agent environments do you want to configure?\n[ ] Configure VS Code to use the Aspire MCP server\n[ ] Configure GitHub Copilot CLI to use Aspire MCP server\n[ ] Configure Claude Code to use Aspire MCP server\n[ ] Configure Open Code to use Aspire MCP server\n\nWhich additional options do you want to enable?\n[ ] Create an agent instructions file (AGENTS.md)\n[ ] Configure Playwright MCP server<\/code><\/pre>\n\n
\ud83c\udf10 JavaScript frontend starter template<\/h2>\n
aspire new\n\nSelect a template:\n> Starter App (ASP.NET Core\/Blazor)\n Starter App (ASP.NET Core\/React)\n Starter App (FastAPI\/React)\n Empty AppHost<\/code><\/pre>\naspire run<\/code> and start building.<\/p>\n\u2601\ufe0f Azure improvements<\/h2>\n
WithDeploymentSlot<\/code> API makes this easy:<\/p>\nvar builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);\n\nbuilder.AddAzureAppServiceEnvironment(\"env\")\n .WithDeploymentSlot(\"staging\");<\/code><\/pre>\nAddAzureRedis<\/code> and renamed AddAzureRedisEnterprise<\/code> to AddAzureManagedRedis<\/code>. URIs now use rediss:\/\/<\/code> as the default scheme, ensuring proper TLS connections for polyglot applications. For more details, see Best practices for the Azure Managed Redis enterprise tiers<\/a>.<\/p>\n\ud83d\udd12 TLS termination support<\/h2>\n
\ud83d\udce6 More goodies<\/h2>\n
\n
Aspire.Hosting.DevTunnels<\/code> is now a stable package – use dev tunnels to expose your local Aspire applications to the internet for testing webhooks and external integrations<\/li>\n.WithOtlpExporter()<\/code><\/li>\n\ud83d\udcab Get started today<\/h2>\n
# Update the Aspire CLI\naspire update --self\n\n# Then, update your project\naspire update<\/code><\/pre>\naspire new # Interactive template picker<\/code><\/pre>\n