npm package: @llamaindex/chat-ui
Description: Chat UI components for LLM apps
Latest version: 0.6.1

# @llamaindex/chat-ui

Chat UI components for LLM apps

## Overview

@llamaindex/chat-ui is a React component library that provides ready-to-use UI elements for building chat interfaces in LLM (Large Language Model) applications. This package is designed to streamline the development of chat-based user interfaces for AI-powered applications.

## Quick Start

You can quickly add a chatbot to your project by using Shadcn CLI command:

```sh
npx shadcn@latest add https://ui.llamaindex.ai/r/chat.json
```

## Manual Installation

To install the package, run the following command in your project directory:

```sh
npm install @llamaindex/chat-ui
```

## Features

- Pre-built chat components (e.g., message bubbles, input fields)
- Minimal styling, fully customizable with Tailwind CSS
- Custom widgets to extend components (e.g., for rendering generated or retrieved documents)
- TypeScript support for type safety
- Easy integration with LLM backends like Vercel Ai
- Code and Latex styling with highlight.js and katex

## Usage

1. Install the package

```sh
npm install @llamaindex/chat-ui
```

2. Configure Tailwind CSS to include the chat-ui components

For Tailwind CSS version 4.x, update `globals.css` to include the chat-ui components (update the relative path to node_modules if necessary):

```css
@source '../node_modules/@llamaindex/chat-ui/**/*.{ts,tsx}';
```

For Tailwind CSS version 3.x, you need to add the following to your `tailwind.config.ts` file:

```ts
module.exports = {
  content: [
    'app/**/*.{ts,tsx}',
    'node_modules/@llamaindex/chat-ui/**/*.{ts,tsx}',
  ],
  // ...
}
```

3. Import the components and use them

The easiest way to get started is to connect the whole `ChatSection` component with `useChat` hook from [vercel/ai](https://github.com/vercel/ai):

```tsx
import { ChatSection } from '@llamaindex/chat-ui'
import { useChat } from '@ai-sdk/react'

const ChatExample = () => {
  const handler = useChat()
  return <ChatSection handler={handler} />
}
```

This simple example looks like this:

![output](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fdf008a3-52b4-49ef-8db5-c9388d4fb8fa)

## Component Composition

Components are designed to be composable. You can use them as is:

```tsx
import { ChatSection } from '@llamaindex/chat-ui'
import { useChat } from '@ai-sdk/react'

const ChatExample = () => {
  const handler = useChat()
  return <ChatSection handler={handler} />
}
```

Or you can extend them with your own children components:

```tsx
import { ChatSection, ChatMessages, ChatInput } from '@llamaindex/chat-ui'
import LlamaCloudSelector from './components/LlamaCloudSelector' // your custom component
import { useChat } from '@ai-sdk/react'

const ChatExample = () => {
  const handler = useChat()
  return (
    <ChatSection handler={handler}>
      <ChatMessages />
      <ChatInput>
        <ChatInput.Form className="bg-lime-500">
          <ChatInput.Field type="textarea" />
          <ChatInput.Upload />
          <LlamaCloudSelector /> {/* custom component */}
          <ChatInput.Submit />
        </ChatInput.Form>
      </ChatInput>
    </ChatSection>
  )
}
```

Your custom component can use the `useChatUI` hook to send additional data to the chat API endpoint:

```tsx
import { useChatInput } from '@llamaindex/chat-ui'

const LlamaCloudSelector = () => {
  const { requestData, setRequestData } = useChatUI()
  return (
    <div>
      <select
        value={requestData?.model}
        onChange={e => setRequestData({ model: e.target.value })}
      >
        <option value="llama-3.1-70b-instruct">Pipeline 1</option>
        <option value="llama-3.1-8b-instruct">Pipeline 2</option>
      </select>
    </div>
  )
}
```

## Styling

### Components

`chat-ui` components are based on [shadcn](https://ui.shadcn.com/) components using Tailwind CSS.

You can override the default styles by changing CSS variables in the `globals.css` file of your Tailwind CSS configuration. For example, to change the background and foreground colors:

```css
:root {
  --background: 0 0% 100%;
  --foreground: 222.2 84% 4.9%;
}
```

For a list of all available CSS variables, please refer to the [Shadcn Theme Config](https://ui.shadcn.com/themes).

Additionally, you can also override each component's styles by setting custom classes in the `className` prop. For example, setting the background color of the `ChatInput.Form` component:

```tsx
import { ChatSection, ChatMessages, ChatInput } from '@llamaindex/chat-ui'
import { useChat } from '@ai-sdk/react'

const ChatExample = () => {
  const handler = useChat()
  return (
    <ChatSection handler={handler}>
      <ChatMessages />
      <ChatInput>
        <ChatInput.Preview />
        <ChatInput.Form className="bg-lime-500">
          <ChatInput.Field type="textarea" />
          <ChatInput.Upload />
          <ChatInput.Submit />
        </ChatInput.Form>
      </ChatInput>
    </ChatSection>
  )
}
```

### Code and Latex styling

Inside the markdown component, we use [highlight.js](https://highlightjs.org/) for code blocks, [katex](https://katex.org/) for latex, and [pdf-viewer](https://github.com/run-llama/pdf-viewer) for pdf files.
If your app is using code, latex or pdf files, you'll need to import their CSS files:

```tsx
import '@llamaindex/chat-ui/styles/markdown.css' // code, latex and custom markdown styling
import '@llamaindex/chat-ui/styles/pdf.css' // pdf styling
import '@llamaindex/chat-ui/styles/editor.css' // document editor styling
```

The `code.css` file uses the `atom-one-dark` theme from highlight.js by default. There are a lot of others to choose from: https://highlightjs.org/demo
You can use any of them by copying [their CSS](https://github.com/highlightjs/highlight.js/tree/main/src/styles/) to your project and importing it.

## Language renderer support (e.g. mermaid)

For any language that the LLM generates, you can specify a custom renderer to render the output.
We have an example for how to render mermaid code as SVG using [a custom renderer](./apps/web/app/demo/mermaid/).

## Example

See the [example app](https://github.com/run-llama/chat-ui/blob/main/apps/web/README.md) for a complete example. The generate a full-featured project to
get started with, use [create-llama](https://github.com/run-llama/create-llama).

## License

@llamaindex/chat-ui is released under the [MIT License](LICENSE).

## Support

If you encounter any issues or have questions, please file an issue on our [GitHub repository](https://github.com/run-llama/chat-ui/issues).