Why does Visual Studio tell me that the AddJsonFile() method is not defined?

You need to include the Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Json NuGet package if you want to call the .AddJsonFile() method.

See: https://github.com/aspnet/Configuration/tree/dev/src/Microsoft.Framework.ConfigurationModel.Json

For further reading, here’s a nice tutorial: ASP.NET vNext Moving Parts: IConfiguration.