Understand The Platform

Explanation

Use the explanation section when you want the reasoning behind the product: architecture, operating principles, rollout guidance, and runtime patterns.

Architecture and principles Feature rollout guidance Local and production runtime patterns

This section is for decisions, not just steps. Use it when you need to understand why Simple Chat is put together the way it is and how that affects deployment, operations, and feature rollout.

Architecture

Understand how App Service, Azure OpenAI, AI Search, Cosmos DB, Storage, and optional services combine into one application surface.

Open architecture

Design Principles

See the operating philosophy behind the product, including security, enterprise readiness, modularity, observability, and user-centered design.

Open design principles

Feature Guidance

Use the feature guidance page to decide which capabilities belong in a first rollout and which ones should be layered in after the platform stabilizes.

Open feature guidance

Runtime Patterns

Compare the recommended local developer loop with the Azure production runtime model so startup decisions stay consistent with the deployment model.

Local runtime · Azure production

Use these pages differently from how-to guides

How-to guides are task-oriented. The explanation section is where you go when you want to understand the tradeoffs behind deployment models, feature boundaries, or operational choices before you commit to one path.

Continue into deeper references

Version history

Track long-lived feature and fix documentation by version when you need historical context for rollout planning or regression analysis.

Features by version · Fixes by version