feat(provider): add support for azure openai provider

[kunalk16]

📝 Description

Adds support for LLM calls to Azure OpenAI provider so that users can consume LLM models from Azure subscriptions

🗣️ Type of Change

• 🐞 Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• ✨ New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• 📖 Documentation update
• ⚡ Code refactoring (no functional changes, no api changes)

🤖 AI Code Generation

• 🤖 Fully AI-generated (100% AI, 0% Human)
• 🛠️ Mostly AI-generated (AI draft, Human verified/modified)
• 👨‍💻 Mostly Human-written (Human lead, AI assisted or none)

🔗 Related Issue

Closes #1424

📚 Technical Context (Skip for Docs)

• Reference URL:
• Reasoning:

🧪 Test Environment

• Hardware: Azure VM
• OS: Ubuntu 24.04
• Model/Provider: gpt-5.2-chat from Azure OpenAI
• Channels: None

📸 Evidence (Optional)

Screenshots

☑️ Checklist

• My code/docs follow the style of this project.
• I have performed a self-review of my own changes.
• I have updated the documentation accordingly.

[CLAassistant]

All committers have signed the CLA.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Adds a first-class Azure OpenAI provider implementation so PicoClaw can make LLM chat completion calls against Azure OpenAI deployments, while deduplicating shared OpenAI-compatible utilities.

Changes:

• Introduce pkg/providers/azure provider with Azure-specific URL construction, api-key auth, and max_completion_tokens handling.
• Extract shared OpenAI-compatible helpers into pkg/providers/common and refactor openai_compat to use them.
• Wire the provider into the factory/config + update example configs and README provider tables.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 16 out of 16 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
pkg/providers/openai_compat/provider.go	Refactors OpenAI-compat provider to use new shared common helpers.
pkg/providers/openai_compat/provider_test.go	Updates serialization tests to use common.SerializeMessages.
pkg/providers/factory_provider.go	Adds azure / azure-openai protocol support and instantiates Azure provider.
pkg/providers/factory_provider_test.go	Adds protocol parsing + factory tests for Azure config cases.
pkg/providers/common/common.go	New shared utilities: HTTP client creation, message serialization, response/error parsing, numeric helpers.
pkg/providers/common/common_test.go	Unit tests for the new shared provider utilities.
pkg/providers/azure/provider.go	New Azure OpenAI provider implementation.
pkg/providers/azure/provider_test.go	Tests for Azure URL/auth/body behaviors and timeout options.
pkg/config/defaults.go	Adds an Azure model entry to the default config template.
config/config.example.json	Adds an Azure model example configuration.
README.md	Documents azure as a supported provider and adds it to the provider table.
README.zh.md / README.vi.md / README.pt-br.md / README.ja.md / README.fr.md	Adds Azure OpenAI entry to localized provider tables.

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[kunalk16]

@wj-xiao / @lxowalle / @imguoguo Would really appreciate if you could could review this PR as it is getting merge conflicts. :)

[kunalk16]

@yinwm / @wj-xiao / @lxowalle / @imguoguo / @alexhoshina Would really appreciate if you could could review this PR. Testing is complete, all PR review comments addressed.

[kunalk16]

@alexhoshina I have fixed the linting issues, please could you re-trigger the CI workflow?

[yinwm]

Code Review: Azure OpenAI Provider Support

Overall

The implementation is well-structured with good separation of concerns. The extraction of common utilities into pkg/providers/common is a solid approach for code reuse.

---

Findings

1. API Version Hardcoded (provider.go:25)

azureAPIVersion = "2024-10-21"

The API version is hardcoded. Consider documenting the upgrade process or making it configurable.

2. Deployment Name Validation (provider.go:89)

While url.JoinPath provides protection against path traversal, there's no validation on the deployment name itself. Users could pass invalid characters that would cause the request to fail.

Suggestion: Add validation to ensure deployment names only contain allowed characters (alphanumeric, hyphen, underscore).

3. Redundant Empty Check (provider.go:84-86)

The apiBase == "" check in Chat() is redundant since factory_provider.go already validates this. However, it doesn't hurt as a safety measure for direct Provider usage.

4. Error Handling

Consider handling Azure-specific error codes (429 rate limiting, 503 unavailable) for better user experience, though the current generic handling works.

5. Documentation: config.example.json

The example could include the proxy field since many users need it:

{
  "model_name": "azure-gpt5",
  "model": "azure/my-gpt5-deployment",
  "api_key": "your-azure-api-key",
  "api_base": "https://your-resource.openai.azure.com",
  "proxy": ""  // optional
}

6. defaults.go Default Value

APIBase: "https://your-resource.openai.azure.com",

This default is not a valid URL. Consider leaving it empty or using a clearer placeholder like https://<your-resource>.openai.azure.com.

---

Summary

Category	Status
Functionality	✅ Complete
Code Quality	✅ Clean and secure
Security	✅ Path injection protection in place
Maintainability	✅ Good common abstraction
Documentation	⚠️ Minor improvements needed

Overall: Approve - Ready to merge with minor documentation suggestions above.

[Orgmar]

@kunalk16 Great addition bringing Azure OpenAI provider support to PicoClaw. Users with Azure subscriptions will appreciate being able to use their deployed models directly. Clean implementation with proper test coverage.

We have a PicoClaw Dev Group on Discord for contributors to connect and collaborate. Interested? Send an email to [email protected] with the subject [Join PicoClaw Dev Group] + your GitHub account and we'll send you the invite link!