microsoft/semantic-kernel · error · ServiceInitializationError

Error creating OnnxGenAISettings

Error message

Error creating OnnxGenAISettings: {e}

What it means

Raised by the OnnxGenAIChatCompletion constructor when OnnxGenAISettings(...) raises a Pydantic ValidationError during settings construction. The original error is included via an f-string in the message. This indicates a structural settings problem (wrong type for env values, etc.) rather than a missing value.

Solutions

  1. Read the full error message which embeds the Pydantic ValidationError details
  2. Fix the offending environment variable or .env entry
  3. Verify env_file_path is valid and the encoding matches env_file_encoding
Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

from pydantic import ValidationError
from semantic_kernel.connectors.ai.onnx.onnx_gen_ai_settings import OnnxGenAISettings

try:
    test_settings = OnnxGenAISettings(chat_model_folder='/path/to/model')
except ValidationError as e:
    print(f'Configuration is invalid: {e}')
    raise

chat = OnnxGenAIChatCompletion(ai_model_path='/path/to/model')

Try / catch

from semantic_kernel.exceptions.service_exceptions import ServiceInitializationError

try:
    chat = OnnxGenAIChatCompletion()
except ServiceInitializationError as e:
    logger.error('OnnxGenAI chat settings error: %s', e)
    raise

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: Constructing OnnxGenAIChatCompletion with settings that fail Pydantic validation — e.g. ONNX_GEN_AI_CHAT_MODEL_FOLDER set to a non-string type in the environment, or a corrupt .env file pointed to by env_file_path.

Common situations: Environment variable with unexpected encoding; env_file_path pointing at an unreadable file; .env file with malformed key=value pairs that Pydantic rejects.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of microsoft/semantic-kernel@c028a0c7dc (2026-08-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/7a4b0f2d4f50a563. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at python/semantic_kernel/connectors/ai/onnx/services/onnx_gen_ai_chat_completion.py:71

        """Initializes a new instance of the OnnxGenAITextCompletion class.

        Args:
            template : The chat template configuration.
            ai_model_path : Local path to the ONNX model Folder.
            ai_model_id : The ID of the AI model. Defaults to None.
            env_file_path : Use the environment settings file as a fallback
                to environment variables.
            env_file_encoding : The encoding of the environment settings file.
            kwargs : Additional arguments.
        """
        try:
            settings = OnnxGenAISettings(
                chat_model_folder=ai_model_path,
                env_file_path=env_file_path,
                env_file_encoding=env_file_encoding,
            )
        except ValidationError as e:
            raise ServiceInitializationError(f"Error creating OnnxGenAISettings: {e}") from e

        if settings.chat_model_folder is None:
            raise ServiceInitializationError(
                "AI model path is not provided. Please provide the 'ai_model_path' parameter in the constructor. "
                "OR set the 'ONNX_GEN_AI_CHAT_MODEL_FOLDER' environment variable."
            )

        if ai_model_id is None:
            ai_model_id = settings.chat_model_folder

        super().__init__(ai_model_id=ai_model_id, ai_model_path=settings.chat_model_folder, template=template, **kwargs)

        if self.enable_multi_modality and template is None:
            raise ServiceInitializationError(
                "When using a multi-modal model, a template must be specified."
                " Please provide a ONNXTemplate in the constructor."
            )

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