Quickstart

Build agents that get smarter with every use.

Rich Threads keep messages, generative UI, and tool activity available across sessions and devices.

Learning turns real usage into skills that improve your agent.

Build a new agent or bring one you already have. Any frontend, any backend.

Prerequisites#

Before you begin, you'll need the following:

A Google Gemini API key
Node.js 20+
Python 3.9+
Your favorite package manager

Getting started#

Create a free account#

Sign up for a free developer account for CopilotKit Intelligence to get a license key. You'll use it later to enable persistent threads and the inspector.

Choose your starting point#

You can either start fresh with our starter template or integrate CopilotKit into your existing ADK agent.

Run our CLI#

npx copilotkit@latest create

The CLI walks you through:

Project name
CopilotKit Intelligence — persistent threads and the inspector. Choose Yes to scaffold a project pre-wired for the platform (the CLI walks you through sign-up, or you can create an account first), or No for a standard ADK setup.
Framework — pick ADK when prompted.

Install dependencies#

npm install

Configure your environment#

Create a .env file in your agent directory and add your Google API key:

agent/.env

GOOGLE_API_KEY=your_google_api_key

What about other models?

The starter template is configured to use Google's Gemini by default, but you can modify it to use any language model supported by ADK.

Start the development server#

npm run dev

pnpm dev

yarn dev

bun dev

This will start both the UI and agent servers concurrently.

🎉 Start chatting!#

Your AI agent is now ready to use! Navigate to localhost:3000 and start prompting it:

Set the theme to orange

Write a proverb about AI

Get the weather in SF

Troubleshooting

If you're having connection issues, try using 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost
Make sure your agent is running on port 8000
Check that your Google API key is correctly set

Open Inspector and confirm setup#

On localhost, click the Inspector button in the corner of the app.

Open Agents, then Agent. Your agent is listed.
Send a chat message. Open Agents, then AG-UI Events. Events are moving.
Open Threads. The list is unlocked (Intelligence is on), or locked with Enable Intelligence (Intelligence is off).

More detail: Inspector.

What's next?#

Now that you have your basic agent setup, explore these advanced features:

Implement Human in the Loop

Allow your users and agents to collaborate together on tasks.

Utilize the Shared State

Learn how to synchronize your agent's state with your UI's state, and vice versa.

Add some generative UI

Render your agent's progress and output in the UI.

Setup frontend actions

Give your agent the ability to call frontend tools, directly updating your application.