Vercel AI SDK

Architecture Overview

The SDK is organized into three layers. AI SDK Core provides model-agnostic functions (generateText, streamText, generateObject) that work with any provider via a unified interface. AI SDK UI provides framework hooks (useChat, useCompletion) for building interactive UIs with automatic streaming. AI SDK RSC enables streaming React Server Components with AI-generated content. The provider system allows hot-swapping between OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other model providers with zero code changes.

When to Use Vercel AI SDK

• AI-powered web applications with streaming UIs
• Chat interfaces with tool use and multi-turn conversations
• Multi-provider applications that swap models dynamically
• Structured data generation with validated outputs
• Next.js and React AI integration

Strengths & Weaknesses

Quick Start

import { generateText, tool } from "ai";
import { openai } from "@ai-sdk/openai";
import { z } from "zod";

const result = await generateText({
  model: openai("gpt-4o"),
  tools: {
    weather: tool({
      description: "Get the weather in a location",
      parameters: z.object({
        location: z.string().describe("The city to get weather for"),
      }),
      execute: async ({ location }) => ({
        location,
        temperature: 72,
        condition: "Sunny",
      }),
    }),
  },
  maxSteps: 5, // Enable multi-step tool use
  prompt: "What's the weather in San Francisco?",
});

console.log(result.text);

Features at a Glance

Notable Users

Resources