Chainlit - AI SDKs and Libraries Tool

Overview

Chainlit is an open-source Python framework for rapidly building production-ready conversational AI applications. It provides a developer-focused SDK, a browser-based UI, and an event-driven pattern (step functions) that help structure multi-step interactions, manage conversational state, and stream responses to users. According to the GitHub repository, Chainlit emphasizes fast local development (hot-reload dev server), reusable UI components (buttons, forms, code blocks, images), and straightforward integrations with popular LLM providers and tooling such as OpenAI, Hugging Face, LangChain, and retrieval libraries. Designed for teams shipping chatapps and RAG systems, Chainlit offers templates and examples to accelerate common workflows—chatbots, assistants that use external knowledge, and developer tooling around message flows. It can be run locally for development, packaged in Docker for deployment, and integrates with existing LLM client libraries so you can use preferred models and orchestration layers. For full details and examples, see the Chainlit GitHub repository and examples directory.

Installation

Install via pip:

pip install chainlit
chainlit init  # create a starter project from template
chainlit run app.py  # start dev server and UI for your app

Key Features

  • Browser-based UI with reusable components: text, code, images, buttons, tables, and file uploads.
  • Step functions and event handlers to structure multi-step LLM interactions and control flow.
  • Streaming responses and incremental rendering for responsive conversational experiences.
  • Integrations with popular LLM providers and tooling (OpenAI, Hugging Face, LangChain, retrieval tools).
  • Local dev server with hot reload plus Docker-friendly runtime for easy deployment.

Community

Chainlit is actively developed as an open-source project on GitHub with an examples directory, templates, and community issue/discussion threads. The project encourages contributions, offers sample apps for common patterns, and maintains documentation and tutorials to help developers onboard quickly. For up-to-date activity, issues, and community discussions, consult the Chainlit GitHub repository.

Last Refreshed: 2026-01-09

Key Information

  • Category: SDKs and Libraries
  • Type: AI SDKs and Libraries Tool