# What Is Agentic UI?

> Source: <https://julin.ai/2026/08/23/agentic-ui/>
> Published: 2026-08-22 12:00:00+00:00

# What Is Agentic UI?

You already know ChatGPT’s style, but it moved away from the old chat interface some time ago. A chat interface works like ping-pong: one message bubble, then another. Agentic UI does not work that way, because it often runs a long process behind the scenes. Between your prompt and the agent’s reply, many details happen. The interface must show you these details.

Here is what I believe agentic UI must give you:

**Progress.** Show you where the agent stands in the task, not just that it is working.**Tool use.** Show you which tools ran and what input each one used.**Direction.** Show you if the reasoning is still on track.**Control.** If it is not on track, let you stop, redirect, or undo the action.

## UI styles

Here lists a few agentic UI styles.

**Chat interface.** Chat bubbles, streaming responses, expandable tool-call sections, and “thinking” indicators. Example:[ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com).**Copilot interface.** A sidebar you can show or hide, instead of a full conversational app — a good fit as you evolve an app from non-agentic to agentic. Example:[VS Code](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode)Copilot.**Canvas interface.** Chat on one side, a canvas or file explorer on the other. Must persist artifacts, support versioning, and let you edit them. Examples:[ChatGPT Canvas](https://chatgpt.com),[Claude Artifacts](https://claude.ai).**Dashboard interface.** Built for observability — real-time status, resource usage, queue status, warnings — so you can monitor and steer long-running agents. You can start by building a[Grafana](https://github.com/grafana/grafana)dashboard.**Collaborative interface.** A chat variant that treats humans and agents as peers, with collaborator badges and multiple roles in one thread. Example:[Cumora](https://github.com/yetone/cumora).**Workflow interface.** Node-based graphs, common in creative tools. Example:[ComfyUI](https://github.com/Comfy-Org/ComfyUI).**Terminal interface (TUI).** Runs fully in the terminal, common for coding agents. Examples:[Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code),[Cursor](https://cursor.com),[Codex](https://github.com/openai/codex),[Aider](https://github.com/Aider-AI/aider).

## UI components

Regardless of style, most agentic UIs draw from the same set of primitive components:

**Agent status indicator.** Shows the agent’s current state, such as Thinking, Searching, Coding, or Waiting.**Streaming response.** Exposes output incrementally as it’s generated.**Reasoning display.** A dedicated area for the model’s reasoning, like`<think>...</think>`

output.**Tool use visualization.** Shows which tool ran and what input it used.**Approval gate.** Pauses for human approval before a risky action runs — human-in-the-loop control.**Scheduled-task card.** Asks whether to create a background task that tracks an event.**Compaction.** Shown when the conversation nears the context window’s limit.**Completion.** Reports what got done, such as “Done: 13 sites checked, 4 options found.”**Error.** Handles failures gracefully: tool errors, hallucinations, an aborted plan, or a max-turn limit reached.**Questionnaire.** Pops up a short question list when the agent is uncertain, so you can fill in the gaps.**Generative UI.** The agent picks a native component, such as a stock quote, weather card, or data chart.**Input.** More than a textarea: file select, thinking-level control, model switch, dictation, and send/steer/pause buttons.**Sources drawer.** Collects the evidence the agent consulted.**MCP/tool list.** Lists the tools and MCP servers available to the agent.

This list will keep growing as people discover fun, engaging agentic UX. I’ll update it every now and then. :P

## UI frameworks

A few frameworks stand out for building agentic UI today:

The most widely used framework for production web-based agent UIs. It gives you good low-level control, and I use it in my own work. Its generative UI feature is neat.[Vercel ai-sdk](https://github.com/vercel/ai).Getting popular too. It is built around a protocol called[CopilotKit](https://github.com/CopilotKit/CopilotKit).[ag-ui](https://github.com/ag-ui-protocol/ag-ui).It supports multiple backends, such as ai-sdk, ag-ui, and LangChain.[assistant-ui](https://github.com/assistant-ui/assistant-ui).Popular for building AI and ML prototypes quickly. You will see lots of Gradio apps on Hugging Face Spaces.[Gradio](https://github.com/gradio-app/gradio).Popular for building data dashboards. It has a simple mental model, but it is hard to extend and cannot expose an API.[Streamlit](https://github.com/streamlit/streamlit).It has native LangChain support, an out-of-the-box experience, and little boilerplate.[Chainlit](https://github.com/Chainlit/chainlit).