Chatbot Template: A Production-Ready Foundation for Conversational AI

Vercel has released Chatbot, a free, open-source template designed for building production-grade conversational AI applications. Built on the Next.js App Router with the AI SDK at its core, the template supports any AI model or provider and incorporates patterns refined through Vercel's own work on v0. The template is continuously updated with the latest framework advancements.

The project is available at chatbot.ai-sdk.dev, and its source can be deployed on Vercel with a single click. Notably, the project formerly known as Chat SDK has been split: the template now carries the Chatbot name, with a new Chat SDK offered separately as a unified programming interface for bots across Slack, Teams, GitHub, and Discord.

Core Capabilities Beyond Basic Messaging

Out of the box, the template includes standard chat application essentials: message persistence, user authentication, multimodal support, and shareable chat sessions. However, its differentiation lies in three advanced features:

  • Generative UI. The interface can produce dynamic, interactive components that adapt to the conversation context instead of rendering only static text responses.
  • Customizable artifacts. Developers can build specialized components—whether for document creation, interactive tools, or domain-specific workflows—that extend what the chatbot itself can do.
  • In-browser code execution. The chatbot can generate code and execute it directly in the browser using WASM and pyodide. No discrete sandbox setup is required.

Documentation and Use Cases

The project's documentation covers everything from initial setup to architectural decisions and detailed customization paths. Guides are available for constructing new artifacts, theming (including fonts), designing testing strategies, and following migration guides for new feature releases.

The template is positioned to serve both small experiments and full enterprise deployments, offering a complete foundation without requiring a build-from-scratch approach. For API and implementation specifics, the canonical reference remains the official documentation at chatbot.ai-sdk.dev.