Building a Multi-Turn Chatbot with the Claude API in React

Goodluck Kalu-Nsi — Thu, 14 May 2026 17:45:54 +0000

Building a Multi-Turn Chatbot with the Claude API in React

When building RECORD.AI, I needed to manage multi-turn
conversation state with the Anthropic Claude API. Here's
how I structured it.

The Message Payload

Claude expects messages in this format:
[
{ role: "user", content: "Hello" },
{ role: "assistant", content: "Hi! How can I help?" },
{ role: "user", content: "What is function calling?" }
]

Managing State in React

const [messages, setMessages] = useState([])

const sendMessage = async (userInput) => {
const newMessages = [...messages, { role: "user", content: userInput }]
setMessages(newMessages)

const response = await fetch("https://api.anthropic.com/v1/messages", {
method: "POST",
headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
body: JSON.stringify({
model: "claude-sonnet-4-20250514",
max_tokens: 1000,
messages: newMessages
})
})

const data = await response.json()
const assistantReply = data.content[0].text
setMessages([...newMessages, { role: "assistant", content: assistantReply }])
}

Key Takeaway

Always send the full conversation history on every request —
Claude has no memory between calls.

DEV Community: Goodluck Kalu-Nsi

Building a Multi-Turn Chatbot with the Claude API in React

Building a Multi-Turn Chatbot with the Claude API in React

The Message Payload

Managing State in React

Key Takeaway