Introduction to Chainlit

Chainlit is an open-source Python framework for building production-ready conversational AI applications. It provides a ChatGPT-like UI out of the box, with built-in support for streaming, step visualization, file uploads, and LangChain/LlamaIndex integration.

What is Chainlit?

Chainlit gives Python developers a fast path from LLM prototype to polished chatbot. Unlike Gradio (which targets ML demos) or Streamlit (which targets data dashboards), Chainlit is purpose-built for conversational AI.

import chainlit as cl

@cl.on_message
async def main(message: cl.Message):
    response = await generate_response(message.content)
    await cl.Message(content=response).send()

Key Features

Chainlit vs Alternatives

What's Next?

In the next lesson, we will install Chainlit and build our first chatbot in under 5 minutes.