January 2025 Changelog

Summary

In January, we shipped 36 new versions of our package @assistant-ui/react. We also crossed 10k weekly downloads on npm for the first time. 🎉

shadcn/ui CLI support

You can now install all components using the shadcn CLI, e.g.

npx shadcn@latest add "https://r.assistant-ui.com/thread"

We began a migration towards distributing our components as unstyled primitives and using the shadcn CLI to drop styles in your project.

Styled components moved to @assistant-ui/react-ui

All styled components (Thread, ThreadList, AssistantModal, makeMarkdownText, etc.) have been moved to a new package, @assistant-ui/react-ui.

To ease the migration, we added a migration codemod:

npx assistant-ui upgrade

This will update your codebase to use the new package. This new package remains supported, however, based on the learnings from existing users, we recommend all new projects to use our shadcn/ui CLI instead.

Customizing the max-width of the Thread

You can now customize the max-width of the thread via --aui-thread-max-width CSS variable.

Thread Management

One of our main focus areas in this month was on the new Thread Management API. The new ThreadList API is available under runtime.threads. It allows you to create, switch to, rename, archive, and delete threads.

We shipped a <ThreadList /> component which gives the user the UI to manage their threads.

We also shipped a few hooks useThreadListItem(), useThreadListItemRuntime(), useRemoteThreadListRuntime() and useCloudThreadListRuntime().

Assistant Cloud

We rolled out the new Assistant Cloud service to early users. This is a managed service for persistence, chat history, and thread management. Our runtimes are being upgraded to support Assistant Cloud natively by letting you pass a cloud object to the runtime hook.

Keep an eye out for the public announcement of Assistant Cloud in a few days.

Improvements to our LangGraph Integration

• We now have full support for LangGraph's interrupt()/Command API. You can check out the new example repository here.
• We now also support starting LangGraph runs without a user message (based on button input or other events).
• Cancellation of runs is now supported via an abortSignal being passed to the LangGraph runtime adapter.

Improvements to our AI SDK Integration

We now give you access to annotations and data packets in the assistant message:

type AssistantMessage = {
  metadata: {
    unstable_annotations: [...],
    unstable_data: [...],
  }
}

AI SDK recommended for new projects

For new projects, we recommend using the AI SDK integration. Previously, we recommended our custom SDK called useEdgeRuntime.
With our improved AI SDK integration, we believe it is time to recommend AI SDK for new projects, giving you access to the AI SDK ecosystem.

The edge runtime remains maintained and supported for existing projects.

Misc

• Refactors & API Enhancements:

  • Renamed ModelConfig to ModelContext.
  • Moved switchToThread / switchToNewThread under runtime.threads.
  • Deprecated UIContentPart.
  • ToolCallContentPart.args is now a JSONObject.
  • MessagePrimitive.tools.Override introduced.
  • Added AppendMessage.sourceId to provide better tracking.
  • Reverse order of threads in useRemoteThreadListRuntime for better visibility.
  • Added threads.getById and threads.main APIs.
  • Introduced AssistantCloudThreadHistoryAdapter to handle cloud-based thread history.
  • Auto-injection of history adapter in the local runtime.
  • Tool call id + args are now optional in ThreadMessageLike.
  • Added ThreadListPrimitive.Root.
  • ComposerRuntime.clearAttachments API added.
  • Improved input support for IME keyboards (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Korean).
  • Moved repository to a new GitHub organization (assistant-ui/assistant-ui).

• External Store & Data Handling:

  • Enhanced ExternalStoreAdapter to support metadata and attachments.
  • Renamed getExternalStoreMessage to getExternalStoreMessages.
  • Tool call args streaming support in our Python SDK.

• User Interface & Styling:

  • Styled UI assistant message footer.
  • Improved attachment filename handling to prevent overflow.
  • Renamed CSS class to aui-thread-welcome-suggestions.

• Performance Optimizations:

  • Memoized MessageRepository.getMessages() for better efficiency.
  • Marked ChatAdapter types as readonly.

• Bug Fixes:

  • Fixed event subscription issues in thread lists.
  • Fixed import errors in React server environments.
  • Prevented excessive classes being included via TailwindCSS.
  • Fixed AI SDK annotation packet errors.