Changelog • shinychat

shinychat (development version)

Added chat_restore() which adds Shiny bookmarking hooks to save and restore the ellmer chat client. (#28, #82)
Added update_chat_user_input() for programmatically updating the user input of a chat UI element. (#78)
shinychat now shows tool call request and results in the UI, and the feature is enabled by default in chat_app() and the chat module (chat_mod_server()). When using chat_append() with chat_ui(), set stream = "content" when you call the $stream_async() method on the ellmer::Chat client to ensure tool calls are included in the chat stream output. Learn more in the tool calling UI article. (#52)
Added chat_append(icon=...) and chat_ui(icon_assistant=...) for customizing the icon that appears next to assistant responses. (#88)
chat_mod_server() now returns a list of reactives for last_input and last_turn, as well functions to update_user_input(), append() and clear() the chat. (#130, #143, #145)

chat_app() now correctly restores the chat client state when refreshing the app, e.g. by reloading the page. (#71)
External links in chat messages in chat_ui() now open in a new tab by default, with a confirmation dialog. (#120)

The chat input no longer submits incomplete text when the user has activated IME completions (e.g. while typing in Japanese or Chinese). (#85)

We consolidated the <shiny-chat-message> and <shiny-user-message> components into a single <shiny-chat-message> component with a data-role attribute to indicate whether it’s an “assistant” or “user” message. This likely has minimal impact on your apps, other than custom styles. You should update any shiny-user-message rules to use shiny-chat-message[data-role="user"]. (#101)

CRAN release: 2025-05-16

Added new output_markdown_stream() and markdown_stream() functions to allow for streaming markdown content to the client. This is useful for showing Generative AI responses in real-time in a Shiny app, outside of a chat interface. (#23)
Both chat_ui() and output_markdown_stream() now support arbitrary Shiny UI elements inside of messages. This allows for gathering input from the user (e.g., selectInput()), displaying of rich output (e.g., htmlwidgets like plotly), and more. (#29)
Added a new chat_clear() function to clear the chat of all messages. (#25)
Added chat_app(), chat_mod_ui() and chat_mod_server(). chat_app() takes an ellmer chat client and launches a simple Shiny app interface with the chat. chat_mod_ui() and chat_mod_server() replicate the interface as a Shiny module, for easily adding a simple chat interface connected to a specific ellmer chat client. (#36)
The promise returned by chat_append() now resolves to the content streamed into the chat. (#49)

chat_append(), chat_append_message() and chat_clear() now all work in Shiny modules without needing to namespace the id of the Chat component. (#37)
chat_append() now logs and throws a silent error if the stream errors for any reason. This prevents the app from crashing if the stream is interrupted. You can still use promises::catch() to handle the error in your app code if desired. (#46)

CRAN release: 2024-12-18