GenUI Field Notes

Introduction ​

A polished card inside a chat message, a model generating JSON for a renderer, or a page reorganizing its layout or theme based on user input: today, all of these may be placed under the same term, Generative User Interface, aka GenUI.

For engineers, it is easier to narrow the scope to the technical layer: how client-side UI can dynamically generate, adjust, or assemble interfaces from intent, state, tools, data, and feedback. From this angle, GenUI covers not only the Web pages and apps people use every day, but also experiments that try to generate games and other real-time experiences.

This minibook follows several early practices that are currently observable: OpenUI / Thesys C1, Google A2UI, Vercel's practice, and concrete questions around the expression layer, runtime, and agent development. The notes here are limited to stage-level industry observations. I care more about which differences are already visible, and which questions are worth testing further. I will not try to cover everything. Coding Agents generating product prototypes, where the output does not directly enter production, and games, which remain highly experimental, are outside the scope of this book.

  1. Original content follows the Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.
  2. Full link references at the end of chapters are embedded in the format Title @ Author. A small number of content references are linked in context with plain Markdown links to the original source.
  3. Any quoted or referenced content will be kept as close to the original meaning as possible.
  4. Referenced materials mainly come from official documentation, GitHub repos, demos, technical articles, and product experiments related to OpenUI, A2UI, Thesys C1, Vercel AI SDK, and adjacent GenUI work.

About ​

This minibook is still evolving 🚧...current version↓

GitHub tag

I encourage using AI more for early discovery, demo experiments, and technical discussion. The minibook's core ideas remain the author's own. If you would like to contribute, please visit the GenUI Field Notes GitHub repo. For other questions, feel free to contact me.

Contributors ​