microsoft/aspire · error · InvalidOperationException

No container registry configured for Azure Cognitive…

Error message

No container registry configured for Azure Cognitive Services project resource '{aspireResource.Name}'. A container registry is required to publish hosted agents.

What it means

When publishing (generating infrastructure for) hosted agents on a Foundry project, the project must know which container registry to pull agent images from. If neither an explicitly assigned registry nor a DefaultContainerRegistry is set, ConfigureInfrastructure throws this InvalidOperationException.

Solutions

1. Call .WithAzureContainerRegistry(registryBuilder) on the Foundry project resource before publishing
2. Ensure a DefaultContainerRegistry is set on the project resource (e.g. via a shared publish callback)
3. Verify the publish path is taken only after registry configuration runs (ordering of builder calls)

Example fix

// before
var project = foundry.AddProject("agents");

// after
var project = foundry.AddProject("agents").WithAzureContainerRegistry(containerRegistry);

if (publishingHostedAgents && project.Resource.DefaultContainerRegistry is null)
{
    project.WithAzureContainerRegistry(containerRegistry);
}

try { /* publish / run in publish mode */ }
catch (InvalidOperationException ex) when (ex.Message.Contains("No container registry configured"))
{
    // Configure an ACR and re-run publish.
}

When it happens

Trigger: Running aspire publish / deploy-mode infrastructure generation for a Foundry project with hosted agents where no container registry was attached via WithAzureContainerRegistry (or equivalent) and no default registry exists on the resource.

Common situations: Running locally fine (no publish path) but failing on publish; forgetting to configure a registry in CI where the AppHost publishes hosted agents; a shared AppHost used across environments where only some set a registry.

Understand the failure class

Background: "X is required", "must be set", "cannot be empty": the missing-required-config error family, from Vertex AI project/location to WeChat keys — this error's family across 18 libraries.

Related errors

• Azure Cognitive Services project resource
• Capability host ' ' on project ' ' requires a CosmosDB…
• Microsoft Foundry project resource
• Model must be a FoundryModel or a string model name.
• Model version and format are required when the model is…

AI-assisted analysis of microsoft/aspire@25830f84bd (2026-09-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f6a5dba97c7e39f6. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/Aspire.Hosting.Foundry/Project/ProjectBuilderExtension.cs:440

         * Container registry for hosted agents
         *
         * Only provision registry dependencies when the project will publish a hosted agent
         * or when the user has explicitly supplied a registry override.
         */
        if (RequiresContainerRegistryProvisioning(aspireResource))
        {
            AzureProvisioningResource? registry = null;
            if (aspireResource.TryGetLastAnnotation<ContainerRegistryReferenceAnnotation>(out var registryReferenceAnnotation) && registryReferenceAnnotation.Registry is AzureProvisioningResource r)
            {
                registry = r;
            }
            else if (aspireResource.DefaultContainerRegistry is not null)
            {
                registry = aspireResource.DefaultContainerRegistry;
            }
            else
            {
                throw new InvalidOperationException($"No container registry configured for Azure Cognitive Services project resource '{aspireResource.Name}'. A container registry is required to publish hosted agents.");
            }

            var containerRegistry = (ContainerRegistryService)registry.AddAsExistingResource(infra);
            infra.Add(containerRegistry);

            // Project needs this to pull hosted agent images during hosted-agent deployment.
            var pullRa = containerRegistry.CreateRoleAssignment(ContainerRegistryBuiltInRole.AcrPull, RoleManagementPrincipalType.ServicePrincipal, projectPrincipalId);
            // There's a bug in the CDK, see https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-net/issues/47265
            pullRa.Name = BicepFunction.CreateGuid(containerRegistry.Id, project.Id, pullRa.RoleDefinitionId);
            infra.Add(pullRa);
            infra.Add(containerRegistry);
            infra.Add(new ProvisioningOutput("AZURE_CONTAINER_REGISTRY_ENDPOINT", typeof(string))
            {
                Value = containerRegistry.LoginServer
            });
            infra.Add(new ProvisioningOutput("AZURE_CONTAINER_REGISTRY_NAME", typeof(string))
            {
                Value = containerRegistry.Name

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