Chainlit

Build production-ready conversational AI apps in minutes

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About

Chainlit gives Python developers a fast path from an LLM script to a shareable chat application. The open source framework pairs a Python backend with a prebuilt web frontend, so a few decorators on ordinary functions produce a conversational UI with streamed messages, step-based execution tracking for agent and tool calls, and async task handling. It integrates with LangChain, LlamaIndex, and the OpenAI and Anthropic SDKs, and works with vector stores such as ChromaDB and Pinecone, which makes it a common choice for prototyping RAG assistants and agent demos before investing in a custom frontend. Chainlit is released under the Apache 2.0 license; since May 2025 the project has been community maintained after the original team stepped back, with community maintainers handling code review and releases. Typical users are ML engineers and Python developers who want an interactive chat interface over their models without writing JavaScript.

Should you use Chainlit?

Pick it when

Pick Chainlit when a Python team needs a chat front end over a LangChain, LlamaIndex, or raw SDK agent, with visible tool and agent steps, for an internal tool or a RAG demo, without writing any JavaScript.

Look elsewhere when

Skip it if long-term maintenance matters: the original team stepped back in May 2025 and it is community maintained. For a customer-facing product UI, assistant-ui or CopilotKit give more control; for non-chat demos, Gradio fits better.

Alternatives to Chainlit

  • Gradio

    Actively maintained by Hugging Face and handles image, audio, and file inputs as well as chat, with public share links, though its UI is less chat-centric.

  • Streamlit

    Backed by Snowflake and better when chat sits beside dashboards and data widgets, but its rerun-on-each-interaction model takes more care for long agent chats.

  • assistant-ui

    Full control of a production React chat UI with generative components, at the cost of needing frontend developers where Chainlit needs none.

  • CopilotKit

    Embeds agents inside an existing React app with shared state and approvals, a better fit for products, but requires JavaScript skills Chainlit avoids.

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Details

Price
Free
Platform
Hybrid
Difficulty
Easy (2/5)
License
Apache-2.0
Added
Jan 29, 2026

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