AG-UI Streams

Intelligence’s AG-UI streams store and deliver the interaction to your users. Your framework threads manage the agent’s conversation and model context.

Use Threads Drawer for a ready-made conversation list, or build your own with useThreads. Pass the selected threadId to your chat to load its history and receive new events.

A support desk application with a Threads Drawer listing customer conversations beside CopilotChat case details for Northstar Analytics

Starting fresh?

Intelligence stores your conversation history and restores messages, generative UI, tool interactions, and multimodal inputs when users return.

Already using LangGraph or ADK persistence?

Keep it. Your framework stores agent context and execution state; Intelligence adds AG-UI event history, reconnection, and delivery to your users.

Start with your coding agent#

Copy this prompt into your coding agent to inspect your existing CopilotKit app and configure AG-UI Streams with CopilotKit Intelligence. Prefer to work through the setup yourself? Follow the manual steps below.

Open your coding agent in your project's folder, or in an empty folder for a new app.This runs in a coding agent on your computer.

Set up AG-UI Streams manually#

Create a new CopilotKit app connected to cloud-hosted CopilotKit Intelligence. Your application and CopilotKit Runtime run locally while CopilotKit Intelligence records AG-UI events and delivers them to connected clients. If you already have a working app, follow the Intelligence quickstart to connect it instead.

Create your app#

Run the interactive starter command:

Terminal

npx copilotkit@latest init

Connect CopilotKit Intelligence#

Complete browser sign-in, then create or select a CopilotKit Intelligence project when the CLI asks.

Start your app and Runtime#

Start the generated application and Runtime with the command printed by the CLI. For the standard npm setup:

Terminal

cd <project-directory>
npm run dev

Verify your first thread#

Use the included Threads Drawer to create a conversation. Reload the page or reopen the conversation and confirm that its complete history returns.

See it in Inspector#

Open Inspector on localhost and inspect your conversation under the Rich Threads pane. Real threads appear when Intelligence is on. Enable Intelligence appears when it is off. Open a real thread and use Try from here to copy it into a Playground scratch session. The stored thread does not change.

More detail: Inspector.

Threads-capable CLI starters already include Threads Drawer. Use its guide when you are ready to customize the drawer. Choose Headless Threads later if your product needs a fully custom thread UI.

Production self-hosting: Run CopilotKit Intelligence in your own infrastructure#

Production self-hosting keeps AG-UI Streams, durable event history, identity, storage, and operations inside your network, giving your organization control over data residency, security, and infrastructure. CopilotKit Engineering helps your team deploy CopilotKit Intelligence in your Kubernetes environment. Book time with a CopilotKit engineer to get started.

Why use CopilotKit AG-UI Streams?#

Intelligence’s AG-UI streams add delivery capabilities around your existing agent and framework threads:

Reconnect and catch up. Reopen a conversation to replay recorded events and reconnect to an active run.
Continue in the background. An agent run can continue after the browser disconnects while your Runtime and agent remain running. This is not execution recovery after a server failure.
Deliver across devices. Users can reopen the same conversation on another device. Intelligence synchronizes thread metadata for connected clients; your application supplies a stable user identity.
Separate user history from model context. Intelligence records the AG-UI events delivered through it. Your framework’s model-context compaction and Intelligence’s event replay serve different purposes.
Restore the interactive conversation. Replay includes supported messages, generative UI, tool interactions, state, and multimodal inputs.

These are capabilities of CopilotKit Intelligence, not guarantees provided by the AG-UI protocol alone. Reopening or switching back to a conversation triggers replay and reconnection; see connection behavior.

How AG-UI Streams work#

Both UI paths use Intelligence’s AG-UI streams. A stable threadId connects the visible conversation to the runtime and its durable event history.

A user starts a conversation on a laptop, leaves or switches devices, and returns to the same conversation on a phone.

Your UI opens a conversation with a stable threadId.
CopilotRuntime runs your agent and sends conversation events to CopilotKit Intelligence.
When users return, CopilotKit Intelligence replays the stored history, reconnects any live run, and synchronizes thread metadata.

How are threads scoped to each user?

Your application authenticates its users, and CopilotRuntime resolves that verified identity on the server with identifyUser. CopilotKit Intelligence uses the stable user ID to scope thread lists and lifecycle actions. See Scope AG-UI Streams to the signed-in user for the Runtime contract and an implementation pattern.

What CopilotKit handles#

CopilotKit handles	You control
Durable event storage and replay	Your agent's behavior and tools
Replay-to-live stream reconnection	The conversation experience and layout
Realtime thread metadata synchronization	Which thread actions your users can access
Naming, pagination, archive, and delete semantics	Application authorization and permissions
Runtime-to-platform event plumbing and thread locks	Mapping to native framework sessions when needed
Cloud-hosted or self-hosted platform infrastructure	The deployment model that fits your organization

Headless means custom UI, not custom infrastructure

Threads Drawer and Headless Threads use the same persistence, replay, synchronization, and locking infrastructure. Choose Headless Threads when you want to build the interface yourself, not when you want to rebuild the Threads backend.

Choose how to build the UI#

Threads Drawer

Ship a mobile-friendly conversation sidebar with switching, new conversations, archive, delete, and pagination already wired to your chat.

Headless Threads

Build a custom layout, workflow, permission model, or thread action UI while CopilotKit continues to handle the backend.

For how Intelligence and framework persistence work together, see AG-UI Streams & Framework Threads.

Add AG-UI Streams to existing threads#

Connect your existing CopilotKit app through the Intelligence quickstart to add AG-UI delivery to future runs while your framework continues managing agent context and persistence. To include earlier conversations too, follow Add AG-UI Streams to Existing Threads for the optional historical steps supported for ADK and LangGraph.

CopilotKit Threads are separate from native framework session or checkpoint stores. Your backend can keep a stable mapping when the agent framework also needs its own conversation identifier.

Next steps#

Understand the architecture

AG-UI Streams & Framework Threads covers event replay, live reconnection, synchronization, locking, and lifecycle behavior.

Use the cloud-hosted deployment

Cloud-hosted CopilotKit Intelligence is where you create the project that stores your app's threads and runtime credentials.

Plan production self-hosting

Self-host CopilotKit Intelligence with CopilotKit Engineering to run the Threads platform in your Kubernetes environment.

Look up the API

The useThreads reference lists parameters, lifecycle methods, pagination, and return types.