Blog: Controlling AI Spend w/ AppNet+agentgateway

[therealmitchconnors]

This is the blog equivalent of the Azure booth demo at Kubeon EU 26. Highlights capabilities of the newly launched AppNet, and a "better together" story with agentgateway. Ideally timed around release of agentgateway 1.1 around April 8.

[therealmitchconnors]

Note to self: need to update parameters to point to AppNet control plane, not OSS istio...

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR adds a new Docusaurus blog post describing a platform-layer pattern to control shared AI quota/spend by combining Azure Kubernetes Application Network (AppNet) identity (mTLS) with agentgateway token-based rate limiting.

Changes:

• Adds a new blog post under website/blog/2026-04-09-appnet-agentgateway/.
• Documents an architecture and example manifests for per-application token rate limiting.
• Includes an example validation flow showing success (200) and throttling (429).

[Copilot]

Front matter doesn’t match the blog post conventions used elsewhere in website/blog/ (expects date, authors as keys from website/blog/authors.yml, and tags as keys from website/blog/tags.yml). The current author: + ms.* metadata likely won’t be picked up by Docusaurus and may break listing/attribution/tag pages.

Suggested change

	description: Learn how to use Application Network workload identity and agentgateway to enforce per-application, token-based rate limiting for shared AI services without distributing API keys.
	author: Mitch Connors, John Howard
	ms.author: mconnors
	ms.topic: conceptual
	ms.service: azure-kubernetes-service
	ms.subservice: application-network
	ms.date: 04/03/2026
	date: 2026-04-09
	description: Learn how to use Application Network workload identity and agentgateway to enforce per-application, token-based rate limiting for shared AI services without distributing API keys.
	authors: [mitch-connors, john-howard]
	tags: [aks, application-network, ai]

[Copilot]

This post includes an explicit H1 (# ...) even though the blog layout already renders the title from front matter. Other posts in website/blog/ don’t include a redundant H1, and keeping both typically results in duplicate top-level headings.

Suggested change

# Control AI spend with per-application token rate limiting using Application Network and agentgateway

[Copilot]

The intro is missing the <!-- truncate --> marker that most posts use to control the blog listing excerpt. Add <!-- truncate --> after the opening 1–3 paragraphs so the homepage/blog index doesn’t render the full article.

Suggested change

	<!-- truncate -->

[Copilot]

Spelling: “acessible” should be “accessible”.

Suggested change

	In contrast with our initial scenario, the Azure Foundry API Key is only acessible to the agentgateway, so application teams don't touch any secrets, while AppNet provides per-application identity information on the wire.
	In contrast with our initial scenario, the Azure Foundry API Key is only accessible to the agentgateway, so application teams don't touch any secrets, while AppNet provides per-application identity information on the wire.

[Copilot]

Spelling: “configration” should be “configuration”.

Suggested change

	While the complete configration for this demo can be found here, let's have a look at the key components that make up our rate limit. First, let's configure agentgateway to interoperate with AppNet, which exposes and Istio-compliant control plane:
	While the complete configuration for this demo can be found here, let's have a look at the key components that make up our rate limit. First, let's configure agentgateway to interoperate with AppNet, which exposes and Istio-compliant control plane:

[Copilot]

Grammar: “each application has it's own rate limit bucket” should use the possessive “its”.

Suggested change

	Once we've exhausted our token budget, all requests from httpbin to Azure Foundry will be blocked by agentgateway until our budget resets in 1 minute. Requests from other applications can proceed without being blocked, because each application has it's own rate limit bucket, keyed on AppNet identity.
	Once we've exhausted our token budget, all requests from httpbin to Azure Foundry will be blocked by agentgateway until our budget resets in 1 minute. Requests from other applications can proceed without being blocked, because each application has its own rate limit bucket, keyed on AppNet identity.

[Copilot]

Spelling: “checkout” should be “check out”.

Suggested change

By adopting this platform-oriented approach, we gain centralized control over AI spending, eliminate secrets distribution, and improve operational efficiency. Applications gain transparent rate limiting without code changes, while platform teams reduce overhead and enforce fair resource allocation across the organization. This is just one of the many ways you can benefit from Application Network, built on Istio's Ambient Mode, with readily available open source tools like agentgateway. To learn more checkout (AppNet Docs) and (agentgateway docs).

By adopting this platform-oriented approach, we gain centralized control over AI spending, eliminate secrets distribution, and improve operational efficiency. Applications gain transparent rate limiting without code changes, while platform teams reduce overhead and enforce fair resource allocation across the organization. This is just one of the many ways you can benefit from Application Network, built on Istio's Ambient Mode, with readily available open source tools like agentgateway. To learn more check out (AppNet Docs) and (agentgateway docs).

[Copilot]

The conclusion ends with placeholder doc references (“(AppNet Docs) and (agentgateway docs)”). Replace these with real Markdown links (and descriptive link text) before merging, otherwise the published post will contain broken references.

Suggested change

By adopting this platform-oriented approach, we gain centralized control over AI spending, eliminate secrets distribution, and improve operational efficiency. Applications gain transparent rate limiting without code changes, while platform teams reduce overhead and enforce fair resource allocation across the organization. This is just one of the many ways you can benefit from Application Network, built on Istio's Ambient Mode, with readily available open source tools like agentgateway. To learn more checkout (AppNet Docs) and (agentgateway docs).

By adopting this platform-oriented approach, we gain centralized control over AI spending, eliminate secrets distribution, and improve operational efficiency. Applications gain transparent rate limiting without code changes, while platform teams reduce overhead and enforce fair resource allocation across the organization. This is just one of the many ways you can benefit from Application Network, built on Istio's Ambient Mode, with readily available open-source tools like agentgateway. To learn more, see the [Azure Kubernetes Service application routing documentation](https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/aks/app-routing) and the [agentgateway documentation on GitHub](https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/agentgateway).

[Copilot]

The description in front matter appears longer than the repo’s SEO guideline target (150–160 characters). Consider shortening it so it fits typical meta description display limits.

Suggested change

	description: Learn how to use Application Network workload identity and agentgateway to enforce per-application, token-based rate limiting for shared AI services without distributing API keys.
	description: Use Application Network workload identity and agentgateway to enforce per-application, token-based rate limiting for shared AI services.

[Copilot]

Consider adding an image near the top of the post with descriptive alt text (many posts include a header/hero image to improve scanability and social sharing previews).

Suggested change