Chainlit is an open-source Python package that allows developers to build production-ready Conversational AI applications quickly and easily.
Overview
- Chainlit is an async Python framework for building scalable Conversational AI or agentic applications.
- It enables creating ChatGPT-like applications, embedded chatbots, Slack/Discord integrations, custom frontends, and API endpoints.
- Key features include multi-modal chats, chain of thought visualization, data persistence, debug mode, and authentication.
Integrations
- Chainlit is compatible with all Python programs and libraries.
- It provides integrations with popular AI/ML libraries like OpenAI, LangChain, Anthropic, LlamaIndex, ChromaDB, and Pinecone.
- For LangChain integration, Chainlit sets up a Runnable instance with a custom ChatPromptTemplate for each chat session, invoking it whenever the user sends a message.
Authentication
- Chainlit applications are public by default.
- To enable authentication and make the app private, developers need to define a CHAINLIT_AUTH_SECRET environment variable and add authentication callbacks like password auth, OAuth, or custom header-based auth.
- Each callback optionally returns a cl.User object, and users must have unique identifiers to prevent data sharing.
In summary, Chainlit is a powerful open-source framework that simplifies building and deploying Conversational AI applications with Python, while offering seamless integration with popular AI/ML libraries and robust authentication options.