Can the default Theia AI Chat UI be used in a standalone React application?

[newgenrpa]

Question

Hi everyone,

I am exploring Theia AI and the agent framework for building AI features.

Currently, I have an existing React-based web application, and I would like to integrate AI chat functionality into it. I noticed that Theia AI already provides a default Chat UI and support for Chat Agents.

My question is:

Is it possible to reuse the default Theia AI Chat UI (@theia/ai-chat-ui) inside a standalone React application, without running a full Theia IDE?

Or is the Chat UI tightly coupled with the Theia runtime (ApplicationShell, Widget system, DI container, etc.) and therefore only usable inside a Theia application?

@JonasHelming @planger @rschnekenbu Any guidance or recommended patterns would be very helpful.

Thanks!

[github-actions[bot]]

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• 💬 Previous Discussions

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[planger]

Hi,

I don't, it's practical to reuse @theia/ai-chat-ui (or @theia/ai-core / @theia/ai-chat) in a standalone React application outside of a Theia runtime.

While the concepts and design of those packages are intentionally generic enough to support any IDE or non-IDE domain-specific tooling scenario, they are coupled with the Theia runtime by design. That coupling is actually what enables deep native integration with things like the Theia file system, syntax highlighting in chat responses, Theia state as context variables, calling Theia behaviors as tools, and fitting naturally into the Theia UI shell and widget system.

So if you don't need or want a Theia application (frontend or not even a backend) in the picture at all, I'd recommend not going down that path. Instead, I'd suggest to a look at something like the Vercel AI SDK, which is purpose-built for integrating AI chat features into standalone React applications.

If, on the other hand, you do have a Theia backend running somewhere and just want a custom frontend, there would be more options. However, be aware that most of the Theia AI agent framework actually runs in the frontend by default, including tool call handling, variable resolution, etc.

I hope that helps!