[I] Feature proposal: TDesign React Chat UI, homepage chat entry, and admin-configurable AI assistant content [answer]

["lb1038678031 (via GitHub)" <gi...@apache.org>]

lb1038678031 opened a new issue, #1598:
URL: https://github.com/apache/answer/issues/1598

   ## Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe
   
   We self-host Answer as a community FAQ assistant. The current AI assistant works, but:
   
   - The chat UI is minimal: no thinking-process display, no starter-question entry points, plain text bubbles.
   - The assistant's opening content (welcome text, starter questions) is hardcoded in the frontend and cannot be adjusted by admins.
   - The default system prompt advertises a `semantic_search` tool even when no vector search plugin is installed, so the model may call a tool that does not exist.
   - Visitors cannot use the assistant without an account, even when the admin would like to allow it on a public community site.
   
   ## Describe the solution you'd like
   
   1. **New chat UI built on TDesign React Chat** (`@tdesign-react/chat`, MIT-licensed): streaming markdown answers, a collapsible thinking block for reasoning models, tappable suggestion chips, and a sender with a stop button. Answer's backend contract (`/answer/api/v1/chat/completions`, SSE) stays unchanged — a thin adapter maps `delta.content` to a markdown block and `delta.reasoning_content` to a thinking block, and keeps per-message voting/replay working.
   
   2. **Admin switches on the AI settings page**
      - *Show AI assistant on homepage*: a floating chat entry that reuses the same component.
      - *Allow guests to use the homepage AI assistant*: chat completions moves behind a guest gate; guest conversations stay client-side only and voting is disabled for them.
   
   3. **Admin-configurable assistant content** (AI settings page)
      - Welcome text shown when a conversation starts.
      - A suggested-questions list (one per line) rendered as chips; empty falls back to built-in i18n defaults.
      - The system prompt (zh/en, `%s` as the question placeholder). The backend already stores `prompt_config`; only the admin UI is missing. Saving the form will also stop silently resetting stored prompts to the built-in defaults.
   
   4. **Small related fix**: strip the `semantic_search` line from the default prompt when no vector search plugin is enabled.
   
   ## Describe the alternatives you've considered
   
   Incrementally extending the existing custom UI. That is possible, but a maintained chat component library provides streaming, thinking and suggestion primitives out of the box and reduces the custom code Answer has to maintain. Vision/image input is intentionally out of scope for this feature.
   
   I have a working implementation on my fork and will submit a PR referencing this issue.


-- 
This is an automated message from the Apache Git Service.
To respond to the message, please log on to GitHub and use the
URL above to go to the specific comment.

To unsubscribe, e-mail: issues-unsubscribe@answer.apache.org.apache.org

For queries about this service, please contact Infrastructure at:
users@infra.apache.org


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: issues-unsubscribe@answer.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: issues-help@answer.apache.org