Launch Week: assistant-ui goes multi-platform

This week, we're shipping one major feature every day. The theme: assistant-ui everywhere.

For two years, assistant-ui has been the go-to library for building AI chat on the web. Starting this week, that changes. Same runtime, same adapters, same developer experience — now on every platform your users are.

Day 1 — React Native

Build AI chat for iOS and Android.

We're launching @assistant-ui/react-native — native React Native bindings that bring the full assistant-ui experience to mobile.

Everything you know from the web version carries over:

Same runtime, same adapters. Your ChatModelAdapter, AI SDK integration, or LangGraph setup works out of the box. No rewrites.
Native primitives. View, Pressable, Text, FlatList — not web views, not wrappers. Real native components.
Full feature set. Streaming, tool calls, message branching, thread management, attachments — all there.

Get started in one command:

npx assistant-ui@latest create --example with-expo my-chat-app

Or add it to an existing Expo project:

npx expo install @assistant-ui/react-native @assistant-ui/react-ai-sdk

The API mirrors the web version closely. If you've built with @assistant-ui/react, you already know how to use it.

Read the docs →

Day 2 — React Ink (Terminal UI)

Build AI chat for the terminal.

We're launching @assistant-ui/react-ink — terminal UI bindings powered by Ink, the React renderer for CLIs.

Build rich, interactive AI chat interfaces that run in any terminal:

Composable primitives. ThreadRoot, ComposerInput, MessageContent — the same component model, adapted for the terminal.
Markdown rendering. Ship with @assistant-ui/react-ink-markdown for formatted headings, code blocks with syntax highlighting, tables, and lists — all in your terminal.
Code diff rendering. Built-in DiffView component and composable DiffPrimitive components for displaying code diffs with syntax highlighting, line numbers, and context folding.
Tool calls with live feedback. Built-in ToolFallback component shows spinners and formatted JSON output while tools execute.
Shared backend. Same adapters, same runtime core. Switch platforms without touching your backend code.

Get started:

npx assistant-ui@latest create --ink my-chat-app

Read the docs →

Day 3 — Assistant Cloud Redesign

A new dashboard for managing your AI assistants at scale.

We've completely redesigned Assistant Cloud, the hosted backend for assistant-ui. Thread persistence, analytics, user management, and more, all in one place.

Assistant Cloud dashboard showing analytics, threads, and run tracking

What is Assistant Cloud?

Assistant Cloud gives your assistant-ui app a production-ready backend. Drop in a few lines of config and get:

Thread persistence. Conversations survive page refreshes. Users can pick up where they left off.
Thread list. A ChatGPT-style sidebar, powered by your data — no extra backend work.
Auto-generated titles. Every thread gets a title, automatically.
User authorization. Works with Clerk, Auth0, Supabase, Firebase, or anonymous mode for demos.

What's new in the redesign

The new dashboard at cloud.assistant-ui.com is a full control center for your AI deployments:

Analytics dashboard. Total cost, token usage, run count, average duration — with model distribution charts and usage trends over time.
Thread browser. Search and inspect every conversation. View full message history, metadata, and timestamps.
User analytics. Per-user metrics: runs, threads created, tokens consumed, costs incurred.
Run tracking. Every LLM invocation logged with model, provider, cost, input/output tokens, cached tokens, reasoning tokens, and duration.
Assistant configuration. Create multiple assistants with different models, system prompts, temperature, and top-p settings.
LLM provider management. Configure OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other providers — with encrypted credential storage.
API key management. Generate, track, and revoke project API keys.
Auth rules. Configure JWT validation with JWKS URL, audience, and issuer settings.

Getting started

Add thread persistence to your existing assistant-ui app:

npx assistant-ui@latest cloud

Or integrate directly with the AI SDK using useCloudChat:

npm install @assistant-ui/cloud-ai-sdk @ai-sdk/react ai

Works with any assistant-ui runtime — AI SDK, LangGraph, or custom backends. No migration required.

Read the docs →

Day 4 — tw-shimmer

Beautiful shimmer effects for Tailwind CSS v4. Zero dependencies, pure CSS.

We're launching tw-shimmer — a Tailwind CSS v4 plugin that adds polished shimmer animations for both text and skeleton loaders. No JavaScript runtime, no dependencies — just add a class and go.

Sine-eased gradients. 17 carefully calculated gradient stops following a sine ease-in-out curve. No banding, no harsh edges — just smooth, organic highlights.
OKLCH color mixing. Perceptually uniform color transitions that look great in any color scheme.
Text + Background. Shimmer text labels or skeleton placeholders with the same API.
Auto-sizing. CSS container queries automatically derive speed and spread from container width — no JavaScript measurement needed.
Fully customizable. Speed, spread, angle, color, duration, and repeat delay — all controllable via Tailwind utilities or CSS variables.

Install and add to your CSS:

npm install tw-shimmer

app/globals.css

@import "tailwindcss";
@import "tw-shimmer";

Then use it:

<!-- Text shimmer -->
<span class="shimmer text-foreground/60">Loading...</span>

<!-- Skeleton loader -->
<div class="shimmer-container flex gap-3">
  <div class="shimmer-bg bg-muted size-12 rounded-full" />
  <div class="flex-1 space-y-2">
    <div class="shimmer-bg bg-muted h-4 w-1/4 rounded" />
    <div class="shimmer-bg bg-muted h-4 w-full rounded" />
  </div>
</div>

See the interactive demo →

Read the docs →

Day 5 — Cloud AI SDK

Add cloud persistence to any AI SDK app. Just change your import.

We're launching @assistant-ui/cloud-ai-sdk — a standalone package that adds full thread persistence and management to any Vercel AI SDK application with a single hook change. No providers, no context, no runtime objects.

Before

import { useChat } from "@ai-sdk/react";

const { messages, sendMessage } = useChat();

After

import { useCloudChat } from "@assistant-ui/cloud-ai-sdk";

const { messages, sendMessage, threads } = useCloudChat();

That's it. One import change gives you:

Automatic thread creation. Threads are created on the first message — no manual setup.
Full message persistence. Conversations survive page refreshes. Users pick up where they left off.
Built-in thread list. threads.threads gives you a ChatGPT-style thread sidebar, sorted by recency.
Auto-generated titles. Every thread gets an AI-generated title after the first response.
Zero config. Set one env var (NEXT_PUBLIC_ASSISTANT_BASE_URL) and you're done.
Works with any UI. Keep your existing components — useCloudChat returns the same interface as useChat.

The package exports just two hooks (useCloudChat and useThreads) and four types. It works independently of assistant-ui's runtime and primitives — any React UI works.

Get started:

npm install @assistant-ui/cloud-ai-sdk @ai-sdk/react ai

Read the docs →

See the launch page →

Day 6 — Heat Graph

GitHub-style activity heatmaps for React. Headless, composable, fully customizable.

We're launching heat-graph — a set of Radix-style compound components for building activity heatmap graphs. No styling opinions, no dependencies on charting libraries — just composable primitives you fully control.

Radix-style composable. Root, Grid, Cell, Legend, Tooltip — pick the pieces you need and compose them however you want.
Fully headless. Zero styling opinions. Every element is a plain div you can style with CSS, Tailwind, or any framework.
Tooltip built-in. Hover tooltips powered by Radix Popper for pixel-perfect positioning, no extra deps.
Custom bucketing. Plug in your own classification function to control how counts map to color levels.
Localizable. Month and day labels expose raw values — format with the included English helpers or Intl.DateTimeFormat for any locale.

Install it:

npm install heat-graph

Or add it via shadcn:

npx shadcn@latest add https://r.assistant-ui.com/heat-graph

See the interactive demo →

Read the docs →

One runtime, every platform

The big picture: assistant-ui is now a universal AI chat framework. Web, mobile, terminal — one codebase for your backend, one set of adapters, one way to register tools. The only thing that changes is the UI layer.

@assistant-ui/react          → Web (React + Radix UI)
@assistant-ui/react-native   → Mobile (React Native)
@assistant-ui/react-ink      → Terminal (Ink)

We'll be updating this post throughout the week as we ship new announcements. Follow @assistant-ui for daily updates or join our Discord for early access.