UI with v0

You've learned how to interact with LLMs using the AI SDK. That's great, but your users need an excellent UI. This is where v0 comes in. v0 turns text prompts into well structured, fully styled React components in seconds. From basic prototypes to full-featured applications deployed to the web, v0 quickly brings your UI vision into reality.

Go from text prompt to polished UI components without CSS hell. Get slick interfaces for your AI features without design skills.

Project Context

This uses v0.app as an external tool. The same project setup from earlier applies when integrating your fancy new components.

What is Vercel v0?

v0 is a powerful application building agent that takes your natural language prompts and converts them into fully functioning deployable applications. Feed it a prompt, get back production-ready React code. It's trained on best practices for React, Tailwind and shadcn/ui.

About shadcn/ui

You've been using shadcn/ui components like Card and Button in previous lessons. It's a popular component library that provides copy-and-paste React components built with Radix UI and Tailwind CSS. v0 generates components using this same system, so everything integrates seamlessly. Learn more at ui.shadcn.com.

v0 removes a lot of the initial pixel-pushing and CSS debugging, letting you focus on functionality.

Generate a Component with v0

Let's build a card component to show that structured appointment data from the last lesson.

Head to v0.app and try this prompt:

Create a React card component using Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui Card components. It should accept props: title (string), date (string), time (string, nullable), location (string, nullable). Display title prominently. Show date/time and location below, each with a simple icon (calendar, clock, map pin). Handle null values gracefully with placeholder text like 'Not specified'.

Try this prompt in v0

Iterating on Prompts

Small tweaks in prompts can mean big UI changes and much quicker turn around from idea to deployment:

Weak Prompt:

text

Strong Prompt:

text

Giving v0 specific details will result in more refined output that is closer to what we want. Otherwise we make the LLM guess, and the results reflect that.

Give it a try yourself:

Try this prompt at v0.app:

Create a React card component using Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui Card components. Props: title, date, time, location. Show title and details with icons.

Try this iteration prompt in v0

Build and Integrate Your Own Component

Let's create a component specifically for displaying the structured data from our extraction lesson, then integrate it into your project.

Step 1: Generate Your Component with v0

Use this prompt at v0.app:

Create a SummaryCard React component using shadcn/ui Card components and Tailwind CSS.

Props interface:

headline: string (main title, prominent display)

context: string (background info, smaller text)

discussionPoints: string (key topics, formatted as a list)

takeaways: string (action items, formatted as bullets)

Design requirements:

Clean card layout with subtle border and shadow

Headline should be large and bold

Use icons from lucide-react for each section (MessageSquare for context, List for discussion, CheckCircle for takeaways)

Responsive design that works on mobile

Light background with good contrast

Generate SummaryCard component in v0

Step 2: Copy the Generated Component

After v0 generates your component:

Copy the entire component code from v0
Note any dependencies listed (usually shadcn components and icons)

Step 3: Set Up Dependencies

Check what shadcn components you need and install them:

bash

Overwriting Components

If prompted about existing components, choose Yes to overwrite. This ensures you have the latest versions that work best with v0-generated code.

Step 4: Create the Component File

Create components/SummaryCard.tsx and paste your v0-generated code:

typescript

Step 5: Test Integration

Replace the existing SummaryCard in your summarization page with your new v0-generated component:

typescript

Step 6: Verify It Works

Run your dev server: pnpm dev
Navigate to: http://localhost:3000/summarization
Click "Summarize" and see your custom v0 component in action!

What You've Accomplished

You've now experienced the full v0 workflow:

Prompt Engineering: Crafted a specific prompt with requirements

Component Generation: Let v0 create professional React code

Integration: Added the component to your existing AI-powered app

Testing: Verified it works with real AI-generated data

This is exactly how you'd use v0 in production - quickly generate UI components and integrate them with your AI SDK features!

Integrating v0 Code

The code v0 creates is ready to ship. You can often just cut and paste into your app. Here's how to use it:

Copy Code: Grab everything including imports
Install Dependencies: Often this means shadcn components, which are added like this:

bash

Create Component File: Drop it in components/GeneratedCard.tsx
Import & Use: Pass your data to the new component

Common Gotchas

Missing Components: Run shadcn CLI for any components in imports

Style Conflicts: Global CSS might break things

Type Mismatches: Tweak the props interface if needed

Example Generated Code (Simplified, your code will vary):

typescript

Using it:

typescript

With v0, you can:

Create beautiful UIs for your AI outputs
Iterate on design through text instead of CSS

Key Takeaways

UI-as-Prompts: Tell v0 what you want, get polished React components
Ship Faster: Cut UI dev time by 80%+, focus on AI SDK for low-level heavy lifting
Dead Simple: Copy, paste, add dependencies, import, done
Perfect for AI Results: Quickly create cards/displays for your AI data

It's the speed combo: AI SDK handles the brains, v0 handles the looks. Cuts the UI boilerplate you are required to create by hand dramatically.

Preview: What's Coming in Conversational AI

You've learned invisible AI techniques that work behind the scenes. Now it's time to build direct human-AI interaction that puts users in control!

🚀 From Invisible to Interactive: The classification, summarization, and extraction patterns you've learned will power your conversational interfaces:

Smart routing: Use classification to determine which tools a chatbot should call
Context summaries: Automatically summarize long conversations for better AI memory
Form filling: Extract structured data from natural language in chat interfaces

💬 Professional Chat Interfaces:

Build streaming chatbots with useChat and streamText
Transform basic UIs into professional interfaces with AI SDK Elements
Handle tool calling so your AI can fetch real-time data and perform actions

🛠️ Advanced AI Capabilities:

System prompts: Give your AI consistent personality and behavior
Tool integration: Connect your chatbot to APIs, databases, and external services
Multi-step conversations: Enable complex workflows with multiple tool calls
Generative UI: Render dynamic React components based on AI responses

🎯 The Complete Picture: By the end, you'll combine invisible AI (working behind the scenes) with conversational AI (direct interaction) to create powerful, user-friendly applications that feel magical to use.

Now You're Ready to Build Something More Complex

You've seen the power of Invisible AI techniques. Now it's time for more direct human-AI interaction.

In the next section you will build a full-featured chat interface using the useChat hook from the AI SDK, complete with streaming responses, customizable behavior, tool-use, and dynamic UI components. This is the basic loop that you see in tools like Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, and many other applications that bring the massive power of AI to users' fingertips.