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Part 6 - Embedding your Sidekick

What we cover in part 6

In Part 5 we learned about GenUI, the built-in components, and how to create custom components.

In Part 6, you will:

  • Look at how a Sidekick can be embedded into other applications.
  • Introduce the various embedding approaches.
  • Update an example web application to embed our Sidekick on the page.

Up until now, we have seen how to interact with our Sidekick in various ways:

  • REST API → Each Sidekick has its own REST endpoint that can be used to have a conversation.
  • Fixie Dashboard -> Fixie provides a web UI in the dashboard for interacting with a Sidekick.

Sidekicks can also be embedded in any application or website.

Why Embed a Sidekick?​

Embedding a Sidekick enables you to provide its capabilities to the end-users of your app. Imagine if your GitHub Sidekick were embedded right on GitHub.com. You could simply have a conversation in the context of what you were looking at or doing on the site. And with tools, Sidekicks could be equipped to take action on behalf of end-users.

Types of Sidekick Embedding​

The Fixie Platform SDK enables you to embed your Sidekick in two primary ways:

  1. Bring Your Own Frontend → This is when you want to go fully custom and have fine-grained control over everything. This is beyond the scope of the tutorial. There is an example here.
  2. iframe Embedding → This is an opinionated approach. Fixie provides three React components each with different behaviors:
    1. <FloatingFixieEmbed /> → Provides a button that shows up in your app that end-users can use to toggle the floating chat window.
    2. <ControlledFloatingFixieEmbed /> → Unlike FloatingFixieEmbed it does not provide a button for launch. You manage visibility yourself via the visible prop.
    3. <InlineFixieEmbed /> → Embeds the chat window for your Sidekick inline with the content on your page.

Embedding the Sidekick​

For this section, we are going to use a RedwoodJS sample application. From your terminal:

git clone https://github.com/fixie-ai/redwood-fixie-sample
cd redwood-fixie-sample
yarn install
yarn redwood dev

In your text editor, open the file web\src\pages\FloatingEmbedPage. Edit the following line to include your Fixie user name and Sidekick name:

<FloatingFixieEmbed debug agentId="<Your_User_Name>/<Your_Sidekick_Name>" />

Save the file and then navigate to the FloatingEmbedPage. You can now click the chat button in the bottom-right corner and start interacting with your Sidekick.

"Kick"-Starters

This section provides some optional, suggested exercises you can do to go deeper with your usage of Sidekicks.

Try Other Embedding Components

In this part we used the <FloatingFixieEmbed /> component. Try experimenting with <ControlledFloatingFixieEmbed />. Where in your app might you want to control the visibility of the Sidekick? When would it be useful to have everything inline and use <InlineFixieEmbed />?