In this workshop, we will incrementally augment an existing React application with AI. I'm sure most of you probably already maintain a React app, so rather than starting from the ground-up, let's take something that already works, and develop some patterns for adding practical, real-world AI features without making them feel "bolted on" just for the sake of chasing the hype. We'll explore questions such as "which model should I use?", "should the LLM run on-device or on the cloud?", "am I risking vendor lock-in by picking a proprietary model over an open-source one?", and we'll dive into the deeper topics of using AI frameworks, creating agents, and the clients and servers of the Model Context Protocol (MCP). By the end of this workshop, you should have some applicable knowledge and skills which you can bring to your own applications, and hopefully, you'll walk away with a greater understanding of how and when to actually use AI
This workshop has been presented at React Advanced 2025, check out the latest edition of this React Conference.