Custom conversational assistants for your React app

🐦 Beak.js

Beak.js lets you integrate custom conversational assistants into your React applications.

Key Features:

  • Built-in UI – Comes with a beautiful, fully customizable chat window.
  • Easy to Use – Integrates with your existing React app in just a few lines of code.
  • Open Source – Beak.js is open source and free to use.

Getting Started

Installation

First up, add Beak.js to your project:

npm install @beakjs/react --save

# or with yarn
yarn add @beakjs/react

Setup

Next, wrap your app in the Beak component and add the assistant window:

import { Beak } from "@beakjs/react";

const App = () => (
  <Beak
    openAIApiKey="sk-..."
    instructions="Assistant is running in a web app and helps the user with XYZ."
  >
    <MyApp />
    <AssistantWindow />
  </Beak>
);

Now, you’ve got a chat window ready in the bottom right corner of your website. Give it a try!

Note: Don’t expose your API key in public-facing apps. We will be adding a solution for securely using your API key soon.

Making Beak.js work with your app

You can let the assistant carry out tasks in your app by setting up functions with useBeakFunction:

import { useBeakFunction } from "@beakjs/react";

const MyApp = () => {
  const [message, setMessage] = useState("Hello World!");

  useBeakFunction({
    name: "updateMessage",
    description: "This function updates the app's display message.",
    parameters: {
      message: {
        description: "A short message to display on screen.",
      },
    },
    handler: ({ message }) => {
      setMessage(message);

      return `Updated the message to: "${message}"`;
    },
  });

  return <div>{message}</div>;
};

Note that functions become available to the assistant as soon as their respective component is mounted. This is a powerful concept, ensuring that the assistant will be able to call functions relevant to the current context of your app.

Let the Assistant Know What’s Happening On Screen

You can easily let the assistant know what it currently on screen by using useBeakInfo:

import { useBeakInfo } from "@beakjs/react";

const MyApp = () => {
  const [message, setMessage] = useState("Hello World!");

  useBeakInfo("current message", message);

  // ...
};

By using useBeakFunction together with useBeakInfo, your assistant can see what’s happening on the screen and take action within your app depending on the current context.

Run the Demo

To run the demo, build the project and start the demo app:

git clone git@github.com:mme/beakjs.git && cd beakjs
yarn && yarn build
cd demo/presentation
echo "VITE_OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-your-openai-key" > .env
yarn && yarn dev

Then go to http://localhost:5173/ to see the demo.

Issues

Feel free to submit issues and enhancement requests.

License

MIT

Copyright (c) 2023, Markus Ecker

GitHub

View Github