Tambo AI
Build agents that speak your UI
The open-source generative UI toolkit for React. Connect your components—Tambo handles streaming, state management, and MCP.
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Tambo 1.0 is here! Read the announcement: Introducing Tambo: Generative UI for React
Table of Contents
What is Tambo?
Tambo is a React toolkit for building agents that render UI (also known as generative UI).
Register your components with Zod schemas. The agent picks the right one and streams the props so users can interact with them. "Show me sales by region" renders your <Chart>. "Add a task" updates your <TaskBoard>.
2025-11-07-cheatsheet-demo.mp4
What's Included
Tambo is a fullstack solution for adding generative UI to your app. You get a React SDK plus a backend that handles conversation state and agent execution.
1. Agent included — Tambo runs the LLM conversation loop for you. Bring your own API key (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Mistral, or any OpenAI-compatible provider). Works with agent frameworks like LangChain and Mastra, but they're not required.
2. Streaming infrastructure — Props stream to your components as the LLM generates them. Cancellation, error recovery, and reconnection are handled for you.
3. Tambo Cloud or self-host — Cloud is a hosted backend that manages conversation state and agent orchestration. Self-hosted runs the same backend on your infrastructure via Docker.
Most software is built around a one-size-fits-all mental model. We built Tambo to help developers build software that adapts to users.
Get Started
npm create tambo-app my-tambo-app # auto-initializes git + tambo setup
cd my-tambo-app
npm run devTambo Cloud is a hosted backend, free to get started with plenty of credits to start building. Self-hosted runs on your own infrastructure.
Check out the pre-built component library for agent and generative UI primitives:
2025-11-07-ui-component-library.mp4
Or fork a template:
| Template | Description |
|---|---|
| AI Chat with Generative UI | Chat interface with dynamic component generation |
| AI Analytics Dashboard | Analytics dashboard with AI-powered visualization |
How It Works
Tell the AI which components it can use. Zod schemas define the props. These schemas become LLM tool definitions—the agent calls them like functions and Tambo renders the result.
Generative Components
Render once in response to a message. Charts, summaries, data visualizations.
2025-11-07-generative-form.mp4
const components: TamboComponent[] = [
{
name: "Graph",
description: "Displays data as charts using Recharts library",
component: Graph,
propsSchema: z.object({
data: z.array(z.object({ name: z.string(), value: z.number() })),
type: z.enum(["line", "bar", "pie"]),
}),
},
];Interactable Components
Persist and update as users refine requests. Shopping carts, spreadsheets, task boards.
2025-11-07-db-thing.mp4
const InteractableNote = withInteractable(Note, {
componentName: "Note",
description: "A note supporting title, content, and color modifications",
propsSchema: z.object({
title: z.string(),
content: z.string(),
color: z.enum(["white", "yellow", "blue", "green"]).optional(),
}),
});Docs: generative components, interactable components
The Provider
Wrap your app with TamboProvider. You must provide either userKey or userToken to identify the thread owner.
<TamboProvider
apiKey={process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_TAMBO_API_KEY!}
userKey={currentUserId}
components={components}
>
<Chat />
<InteractableNote id="note-1" title="My Note" content="Start writing..." />
</TamboProvider>Use userKey for server-side or trusted environments. Use userToken (OAuth access token) for client-side apps where the token contains the user identity. See User Authentication for details.
Docs: provider options
Hooks
useTambo() is the primary hook — it gives you messages, streaming state, and thread management. useTamboThreadInput() handles user input and message submission.
const { messages, isStreaming } = useTambo();
const { value, setValue, submit, isPending } = useTamboThreadInput();Docs: threads and messages, streaming status, full tutorial
Features
MCP Integrations
Connect to Linear, Slack, databases, or your own MCP servers. Tambo supports the full MCP protocol: tools, prompts, elicitations, and sampling.
import { MCPTransport } from "@tambo-ai/react/mcp";
const mcpServers = [
{
name: "filesystem",
url: "http://localhost:8261/mcp",
transport: MCPTransport.HTTP,
},
];
<TamboProvider
apiKey={process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_TAMBO_API_KEY!}
userKey={currentUserId}
components={components}
mcpServers={mcpServers}
>
<App />
</TamboProvider>;2025-11-07-elicitations.mp4
Docs: MCP integration
Local Tools
Sometimes you need functions that run in the browser. DOM manipulation, authenticated fetches, accessing React state. Define them as tools and the AI can call them.
const tools: TamboTool[] = [
{
name: "getWeather",
description: "Fetches weather for a location",
tool: async (params: { location: string }) =>
fetch(`/api/weather?q=${encodeURIComponent(params.location)}`).then((r) =>
r.json(),
),
inputSchema: z.object({
location: z.string(),
}),
outputSchema: z.object({
temperature: z.number(),
condition: z.string(),
location: z.string(),
}),
},
];
<TamboProvider
apiKey={process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_TAMBO_API_KEY!}
userKey={currentUserId}
tools={tools}
components={components}
>
<App />
</TamboProvider>;Docs: local tools
Context, Auth, and Suggestions
Additional context lets you pass metadata to give the AI better responses. User state, app settings, current page. User authentication passes tokens from your auth provider. Suggestions generates prompts users can click based on what they're doing.
<TamboProvider
apiKey={process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_TAMBO_API_KEY!}
userToken={userToken}
contextHelpers={{
selectedItems: () => ({
key: "selectedItems",
value: selectedItems.map((i) => i.name).join(", "),
}),
currentPage: () => ({ key: "page", value: window.location.pathname }),
}}
/>const { suggestions, accept } = useTamboSuggestions({ maxSuggestions: 3 });
suggestions.map((s) => (
<button key={s.id} onClick={() => accept(s)}>
{s.title}
</button>
));Docs: additional context, user authentication, suggestions
Supported LLM Providers
OpenAI, Anthropic, Cerebras, Google Gemini, Mistral, and any OpenAI-compatible provider. Full list. Missing one? Let us know.
How Tambo Compares
| Feature | Tambo | Vercel AI SDK | CopilotKit | Assistant UI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Component selection | AI decides which components to render | Manual tool-to-component mapping | Via agent frameworks (LangGraph) | Chat-focused tool UI |
| MCP integration | Built-in | Experimental (v4.2+) | Recently added | Requires AI SDK v5 |
| Persistent stateful components | Yes | No | Shared state patterns | No |
| Client-side tool execution | Declarative, automatic | Manual via onToolCall | Agent-side only | No |
| Self-hostable | MIT (SDK + backend) | Apache 2.0 (SDK only) | MIT | MIT |
| Hosted option | Tambo Cloud | No | CopilotKit Cloud | Assistant Cloud |
| Best for | Full app UI control | Streaming and tool abstractions | Multi-agent workflows | Chat interfaces |
Community
Join the Discord to chat with other developers and the core team.
Interested in contributing? Read the Contributing Guide.
Join the conversation on Twitter and follow @tambo_ai.
License
MIT unless otherwise noted. Some workspaces (like apps/api) are Apache-2.0.
For AI/LLM agents: docs.tambo.co/llms.txt
