Installation

The Honest UI CLI copies Generative UI into your project under lib/generative. You can edit that source alongside your application.

Use React 19, Tailwind CSS v4, and a project initialized with Honest UI. If you do not have components.json, run:

npx honestui@latest init

See the Honest AI installation guide for the shared project requirements.

This installs the parser, React renderer, default component libraries, form and chart adapters, and the JSON specs used on the server. Imported Honest AI and Honest UI components are declared as dependencies of the bundle.

For a conversation with a composer and thread history, add:

For provider stream validation, optional repair, and server tool helpers, add:

The chat and server bundles both depend on generative-ui. Review the CLI's files and dependency changes before committing, especially if you have customized an existing component.

Generative UI uses the existing Honest UI theme tokens. Markdown also needs Honest Prose, which is declared through the Markdown dependency. Keep the Prose imports added during installation.

Add the chart stylesheet to your global CSS, with the layer order declared before either import:

@layer properties, theme, base, components, utilities;

@import "tailwindcss";
@import "honestui/charts.css";

The layer declaration keeps Tailwind's reset below component styles and utilities. Without that order, importing compiled chart CSS can change spacing and table styles elsewhere in the application.

Copy the fixed-program example into a client component. You should see a heading and a card before configuring any model endpoint.

If the components appear without their usual spacing, check the global CSS imports and theme tokens first. If Markdown appears as plain unformatted text, check the Prose setup. If the parser rejects a component name, check that the program and selected library match.

After changing a component contract, update the matching server spec. A stale spec can cause the model to generate props or components your renderer no longer accepts.