Show HN: Tambo-AI – Open-Source, Model-Agnostic Alternative to OpenAI's ChatKit (github.com)

Tambo-AI is an open-source, model-agnostic React toolkit for building AI-powered apps with generative UI: developers register React components and tools that an LLM can instantiate, render and update at runtime. The project just open-sourced its hosted backend (tambo-cloud) and provides templates, a UI library (tambo-ui), and developer hooks (useTambo, useTamboThreadInput, useTamboComponentState). You wire components and tools into a TamboProvider (with an API key), declare zod schemas for component props and tool arguments/returns, and the system streams responses that can include a renderedComponent field—examples include dynamic Graph and WeatherCard components. Quick starts: npx tambo create-app or npm create tambo-app; supports Node 18+/npm 10+ and is MIT-licensed. This matters because Tambo makes LLMs act like first-class UI agents rather than just text responders: models can call typed functions/tools and spawn validated, interactive React components, enabling richer generative UX, safer inputs via zod schemas, and composition of tool-assisted workflows. Being model-agnostic and now offering an open-source backend reduces vendor lock-in and eases self-hosting, auditability and customization. Support for MCP servers and streaming transports targets real-time, collaborative experiences, making Tambo useful for dashboards, assistants, and any app that benefits from LLM-driven, executable UI components.