Extra Chill Chat

Generic frontend Gutenberg chat block for WordPress.

Vision

extra-chill/chat is a shared chat UI primitive for WordPress.

The goal is to provide a standard, frontend-first, dumb chat block that can power multiple chat experiences cleanly across different plugins and products.

This repo should focus on the best chat experience possible while leaving backend-specific concerns to adapters and consuming plugins.

Why This Exists

There are already multiple chat block implementations across different repos, including:

• Extra-Chill/extrachill-chat
• Sarai-Chinwag/spawn

Those implementations overlap heavily in UI and runtime behavior, but differ in backend details like:

• authentication
• session management
• billing / credits
• agent transport
• provisioning / availability states
• branding

This repo exists to separate the shared chat experience from the product-specific business logic.

Goals

• Build a reusable Gutenberg chat block
• Keep the block frontend-focused and presentation-first
• Support multiple backend implementations through adapters
• Standardize chat UX across Extra Chill projects
• Make it easy for WordPress plugins to become AI-native without rebuilding chat UI every time

Non-Goals

• Owning backend AI orchestration
• Owning product-specific business logic
• Owning billing, provisioning, or auth policy
• Becoming a monolithic app plugin

Proposed Architecture

WordPress Plugin
    |
    |  server-rendered wrapper + config
    v
Shared Chat Block UI
    |
    |  adapter contract
    v
Backend-specific implementation

Core idea

The shared block should own:

• message list rendering
• composer UX
• loading / error / retry states
• scrolling behavior
• streaming display
• session list UI (when enabled)
• accessibility and keyboard interactions
• mobile and responsive behavior

The consuming plugin should own:

• REST endpoints
• authentication
• pricing / credit logic
• agent lifecycle
• account state
• server availability logic
• branding and product-specific rules

Adapter Model

The main abstraction in this repo should be a narrow adapter contract.

Example shape:

interface ChatAdapter {
  capabilities: {
    sessions: boolean
    history: boolean
    streaming: boolean
    tools: boolean
    availabilityStates: boolean
  }

  loadInitialState?(): Promise<InitialState>
  listSessions?(): Promise<Session[]>
  loadMessages?(sessionId: string): Promise<Message[]>
  createSession?(): Promise<Session>
  sendMessage(input: SendMessageInput): Promise<SendMessageResult>
  clearSession?(sessionId: string): Promise<void>
}

This keeps the UI generic while allowing:

• extrachill-chat to use WordPress REST endpoints
• spawn to use its own gateway / session model
• future implementations to plug in without forking the UI

Initial Priorities

1. Define the adapter API and normalized state model
2. Build a minimal frontend-only chat block shell
3. Support a basic message flow end-to-end
4. Add optional session sidebar support
5. Port one real consumer first (extrachill-chat is likely the easiest)
6. Port spawn after the core boundaries are proven

Migration Strategy

Phase 1

• create core shared block
• define types and adapter interfaces
• implement minimal mount + send + render loop

Phase 2

• adapt extrachill-chat to use shared UI
• validate API shape and message model

Phase 3

• adapt spawn
• support richer session and availability states

Phase 4

• refine styling, streaming, markdown, and extensibility

Repo Status

This repo is currently in the concept / planning stage.

Implementation should start only after the core abstractions are clear enough that we do not just move duplication into a new place.

Roadmap

See GitHub issues for the initial roadmap.

Related Repositories

• https://github.com/Extra-Chill/extrachill-chat
• https://github.com/Sarai-Chinwag/spawn