Small Pieces for Custom Chat Interfaces
Chat UI Widgets takes the opposite approach to a full messaging page: instead of one fixed layout, it collects the individual building blocks of a chat, including message bubbles, typing indicators, user status badges, and file attachment previews. Each widget is a self-contained component you can place inside whatever conversation layout your product already has.
The collection is currently in preparation, and its preview shows a coming soon state while the widgets are finalized. The scope, though, is set: reusable chat pieces built on Shadcn UI primitives and styled with Tailwind, designed to slot into custom interfaces rather than dictate one.
When Widgets Beat a Full Chat Page
Reach for widgets when your chat lives inside something else: a support panel docked in a dashboard, a comment-style thread inside a document, a messaging tab in a mobile-first app with its own navigation, or an embedded conversation in a video call interface. In those cases a full-page block would fight your layout, while individual bubbles and indicators compose into it.
They also complement the complete screens in the library. Teams often start from the full chat app block for the main messaging surface, then reuse matching widgets wherever smaller conversation fragments appear, keeping every chat surface visually consistent.
Foundation of React, Tailwind, and Theme Tokens
The widgets are built with React on top of Shadcn UI primitives, styled entirely through Tailwind utilities and the design tokens defined in globals.css. That means the same guarantees as every other block here: colors resolve from CSS variables, dark and light mode both work from one palette, and changing your theme restyles every widget at once.
Because each piece is small and dependency-light, customization stays local. Restyle a bubble, change how a status dot reads, or adjust an attachment preview without touching anything else, since no widget assumes the presence of another.
Availability and Getting Started
Like the rest of the library, the widgets ship in React, Vuejs, and Svelte versions built from one design, with the Vuejs and Svelte editions building on the shadcn-vue and shadcn-svelte ports. Chat UI Widgets is a pro collection, so once live, the code tab and the shadcn CLI install unlock with an All Access plan.
Installation follows the standard flow: run the CLI command shown at the top of the page with npm, pnpm, yarn, or bun, or copy individual widget files from the code tab, then feed them your message, user, and attachment data as props.