Software Copilot are a new kind of assistant embedded in your app/product. They are designed to help users get the most out of your app by providing contextual guidance and take actions on their behalf.

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Embedding the Copilot

First, make sure your Chainlit server is running. Then, add the following script at the end of your website’s <body> tag:

This example assumes your Chainlit server is running on http://localhost:8000

<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8" />
</head>
<body>
  <!-- ... -->
  <script src="http://localhost:8000/copilot/index.js"></script>
  <script>
    window.mountChainlitWidget({
      chainlitServer: "http://localhost:8000",
    });
  </script>
</body>

Remember the HTML file has to be served by a server, opening it directly in your browser won’t work. You can use simple HTTP server for tests purpose.

That’s it! You should now see a floating button on the bottom right corner of your website. Clicking on it will open the Copilot.

If you plan to use on_chat_start to welcome users, you should set show_readme_as_default to false in your Chainlit config to avoid flickering.

Copilot in action

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Widget Configuration

The mountChainlitWidget function accepts the following options:

export interface IWidgetConfig {
  // URL of the Chainlit server
  chainlitServer: string;
  // Whether to show the Chain of Thought. Only applicable if hide_cot is false on the server
  showCot?: boolean;
  // Required if authentication is enabled on the server
  accessToken?: string;
  // Theme of the copilot
  theme?: "light" | "dark";
  // Font family to use. It is up to the website to load the font
  fontFamily?: string;
  // Custom styling to apply to the widget button
  button?: {
    // ID of the container element to mount the button to
    containerId?: string;
    // URL of the image to use as the button icon
    imageUrl?: string;
    style?: {
      size?: string;
      bgcolor?: string;
      color?: string;
      bgcolorHover?: string;
      borderColor?: string;
      borderWidth?: string;
      borderStyle?: string;
      borderRadius?: string;
      boxShadow?: string;
    };
  };
}

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Function Calling

The Copilot can call functions on your website. This is useful for taking actions on behalf of the user. For example, you can call a function to create a new document, or to open a modal.

First, create a CopilotFunction in your Chainlit server:

import chainlit as cl


@cl.on_message
async def on_message(msg: cl.Message):
    if cl.context.session.client_type == "copilot":
        fn = cl.CopilotFunction(name="test", args={"msg": msg.content})
        res = await fn.acall()
        await cl.Message(content=res).send()

Then, in your app/website, add the following event listener:

window.addEventListener("chainlit-call-fn", (e) => {
  const { name, args, callback } = e.detail;
  if (name === "test") {
    console.log(name, args);
    callback("You sent: " + args.msg);
  }
});

As you can see, the event listener receives the function name, arguments, and a callback function. The callback function should be called with the result of the function call.

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Security

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Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

By default, the Chainlit server accepts requests from any origin. This is useful for development, but not recommended for production.

To restrict the origins that can access the server (hence embed the copilot), set the allow_origins config field to a list of allowed origins.

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Authentication

If you want to restrict access to the Copilot per user, you can enable authentication on the Chainlit server.

While the standalone Chainlit application handles the authentication process, the Copilot needs to be configured with an access token. This token is used to authenticate the user with the Chainlit server.

The host app/website is responsible for generating the token and passing it to the Copilot. Here are examples of how to generate the token in different languages:

You will need the CHAINLIT_AUTH_SECRET you generated when configuring authentication.

import jwt
from datetime import datetime, timedelta

CHAINLIT_AUTH_SECRET = "your-secret"

def create_jwt(identifier: str, metadata: dict) -> str:
    to_encode = {
      "identifier": identifier,
      "metadata": metadata,
      "exp": datetime.utcnow() + timedelta(minutes=60 * 24 * 15),  # 15 days
      }

    encoded_jwt = jwt.encode(to_encode, CHAINLIT_AUTH_SECRET, algorithm="HS256")
    return encoded_jwt

access_token = create_jwt("user-1", {"name": "John Doe"})

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Limitations

Currently, Chainlit Copilot does not support:

  • User env
  • Chat history

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