Ink Example

Terminal chat app with tool calling and file-based memory — built with @agentskit/ink.

A minimal terminal chat app showing streaming, tool calling, and persistent file memory. Runs with tsx — no build step.

#Stack

@agentskit/ink — useChat hook, ChatContainer, Message, InputBar, ThinkingIndicator, ToolCallView
@agentskit/memory — fileChatMemory
@agentskit/core — ToolDefinition
Ink 7 + React 19, executed via tsx

#Code

import React from 'react'
import { render, Box, Text } from 'ink'
import { ChatContainer, InputBar, Message, ThinkingIndicator, ToolCallView, useChat } from '@agentskit/ink'
import { fileChatMemory } from '@agentskit/memory'
import type { ToolDefinition } from '@agentskit/core'

const getTimeTool: ToolDefinition = {
  name: 'get_time',
  description: 'Returns the current time as a string.',
  execute: () => new Date().toLocaleTimeString(),
}

const memory = fileChatMemory('.example-ink-history.json')

function App() {
  const chat = useChat({
    adapter: yourAdapter,  // openai, anthropic, etc.
    systemPrompt: 'You are a helpful terminal assistant.',
    tools: [getTimeTool],
    memory,
  })

  return (
    <Box flexDirection="column" gap={1}>
      <Text bold color="cyan">AgentsKit Ink Example — Tools + Memory</Text>
      <ChatContainer>
        {chat.messages.map(message => (
          <Box key={message.id} flexDirection="column">
            <Message message={message} />
            {message.toolCalls?.map(tc => (
              <ToolCallView key={tc.id} toolCall={tc} expanded />
            ))}
          </Box>
        ))}
      </ChatContainer>
      <ThinkingIndicator visible={chat.status === 'streaming'} />
      <InputBar chat={chat} placeholder="Type and press Enter..." />
    </Box>
  )
}

render(<App />)

#Try it

cd apps/example-ink
pnpm dev

The example ships a demo adapter; replace createDemoAdapter() with any @agentskit/adapters factory and set the appropriate API key env var.

#Key patterns

File memory — fileChatMemory('.example-ink-history.json') persists history to a local JSON file. The path is relative to the process working directory.
ThinkingIndicator — renders an animated spinner while chat.status === 'streaming'. Ink handles terminal cursor management automatically.
ToolCallView expanded — pass expanded to show full args and result inline; omit for a compact single-line view.
No build step — tsx src/index.tsx runs TypeScript directly; production builds use tsc --noEmit for type checking only.
Same contract as React — useChat, tool schemas, memory, and adapters are identical; only the renderer differs.

Explore nearby

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