Build AI Chat Apps in Minutes: Unleashing the Power of NeonChat Starter Kit

This is a submission for the Neon Open Source Starter Kit Challenge : Ultimate Starter Kit

My Kit

Building AI chat apps can be a real challenge. You've got to juggle user logins, make sure AI responses appear instantly, save all those conversations, and tie everything to a solid database. It's a lot to handle, even for experienced developers. But here's the good news: I've cooked up something that's about to make your life a whole lot easier.

Welcome to NeonChat, the ultimate open-source starter kit for building AI-powered chat applications! This kit combines the power of Next.js, Prisma, and Neon's serverless Postgres to create a flexible, scalable, and developer-friendly foundation for your next AI chat project.

The main features? Well, we've got:

• A clean chat interface that doesn't look like it's from the 90s
• Login with email or GitHub
• Real-time chatting with AI
• Saving conversations (Prisma doing it's thing with Neon's Postgres)
• Ultimately, a CLI tool which allows developers to easily select whichever AI provider they want to use and get started in minutes.

Link to Kit

You can find the NeonChat starter kit on GitHub https://github.com/lenajeremy/nextjs-ai-neon-starter
The CLI tool is https://github.com/lenajeremy/nextjs-ai-starter-script

Or you can simply run this command to get started

npx neonchat

My Journey

I chose this stack for several reasons:

• Next.js because it's just awesome.
• Prisma makes database stuff really simple and intuitive.
• Neon's Postgres for it's scalability and its ease of use. Also, because I needed to 😂😂
• I used Vercel's AI SDK because I wanted people to be able to use whatever AI service they wanted to and not be restricted to the one (the one that was kind enough to give me free credits). And also because it was really easy to integrate.
• Shadcn because it's the best.

Things I learned:

• Trying to make something flexible AND simple is like juggling flaming swords while balancing on a tightrope.
• Documentation is Key: Writing clear documentation is as important as writing good code. I put extra effort into creating a README that guides developers through every step of the process

To help you get up and running quickly, here's a brief overview of how to use NeonChat:

Get Started

• Run npx neonchat in your terminal.
• Follow the prompts to select your preferred AI provider and configure your project.
• The CLI tool will set up your project, customize the starter templates based on the selected AI provider and install the required dependencies for you.
• All you have to do is navigate to the created project directory and
• Start the development server with npm run dev.
• Visit http://localhost:3000 to see your NeonChat instance in action!

Conclusion

NeonChat aims to empower developers to build AI-powered chat applications quickly and efficiently. By combining a feature-rich frontend, a flexible backend, and an intuitive setup process, we hope to inspire a new wave of innovative AI projects.
We're excited to see what the community builds with NeonChat. Happy coding!