Chris Nicholas
@chrisnicholas.dev
📤 243
📥 291
📝 294
Developer experience
@liveblocks.io
• Interactive articles on chrisnicholas.dev
Speed up
@liveblocks.io
rooms with our new API. The `prewarmRoom` methods speeds up connecting to a room for the next 10 seconds. Trigger it when a user hovers over a room link and it'll load quicker!
16 days ago
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Liveblocks uses WebSockets to power our AI instead of HTTP, enabling multi-tab streaming, real-time updates, and more. You can see below how everything keeps streaming in, no matter if you change page, tab, or even reload. Our team have written up why they chose WebSockets ↓
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20 days ago
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Spent a couple hours setting up AI that can edit sheets! This combination feels really powerful when you give your AI other abilities, as demo'ed by this "Fetch weather" tool. Cells stream in one at a time, and are edited as they're completed. Powered by
@liveblocks.io
<AiChat />.
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23 days ago
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Streaming AI generated code into an editor ✨ To make this work I'm calculating the line/character at the end of each chunk, and adding highlights in the editor. Then I'm merging the stream into the previous code so it doesn't start empty! Uses <AiChat /> by
@liveblocks.io
.
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about 1 month ago
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reposted by
Chris Nicholas
Liveblocks
about 1 month ago
What's new in Liveblocks → August 2025 • Stream tool results into your app, enabling real-time document updates. • Edit copilots, knowledge, prompts, programatically with new APIs. • SAML SSO, MFA, directory sync, for Enterprise customers. Plus even more ↓
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Picking the right vector database for your AI app isn't an easy task. @jrowny has written an excellent comparison of 11 major vector databases currently available, based on months on testing. ↓ Read it
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
Chris Nicholas
Liveblocks
about 1 month ago
Which vector database should you use for your AI product? A comprehensive comparison of vector databases, based on our research while developing AI Copilots. Explore 11 options, including Turbopuffer, Pinecone, Qdrant, pgvector.
lblcks.io/L2bHK65
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What's the best vector database for building AI products? | Liveblocks blog
Vector databases are the backbone of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), a key technique enabling modern AI products to deliver accurate, context-aware answers from private data. This is our comprehensive comparison of leading vector databases, including Turbopuffer, Pinecone, Qdrant, pgvector, and many more.
https://lblcks.io/L2bHK65
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You can now mention groups in
@liveblocks.io
comments! Tag a group, and everyone associated will get a notification. Ideal for integrating teams into your app—in the video you can see there's teams for Design, Product, Engineering.
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about 1 month ago
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Experimenting with an AI that can generate full
@liveblocks.io
guides on the fly!
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about 2 months ago
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entry ≠ exit. A design principle that's rarely mentioned is that entry and exit animations should not be the same. These tabs slide in, yet fade out. Why? Because we're showing intent ↓
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2 months ago
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entry ≠ exit. A design principle that's rarely mentioned is that entry and exit animations should not be the same. These tabs slide in, yet fade out. Why? Because we're showing intent ↓
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2 months ago
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I've built an AI web browser! AI chats are way better with context—now you can see exactly where info comes from, trust it, and dig deeper. It'll auto-redirect, open tabs, and fetch pages for you. How it works + code ↓
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2 months ago
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I fully vibe coded this interactive demo! ✦ It always forces you to type the “correct” text into the input. ✦ Hitting enter/submit will animate the remaining text in. ✦ Delete text with backspace or ⌘+A and typing. Visual design by
@pierrelevaillant.bsky.social
.
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2 months ago
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Notion's AI can answer questions on any document you've created. But I have 1,000s of documents in my Notion—you can't put all these pages inside an AI prompt. How did they make it work? It's more interesting than you think ↓
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2 months ago
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reposted by
Chris Nicholas
Liveblocks
3 months ago
This July, adding advanced AI to your app got even easier. • Submit whole websites to your AI knowledge base • Polished scroll behavior, improving readability • AI can use custom markdown components Learn more ↓
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Streaming AI chat messages have introduced a new UX challenge. In apps like Whatsapp, messages are short and arrive all at once. Pinning messages to the bottom of the chat makes sense—it's expected, and works well for human interactions. But AI chats are a new paradigm ↓
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3 months ago
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Book calendar events with natural language! I've built an AI chat that can book calendar events with front-end tool calling. It can modify events, with a human-in-the-loop confirmation step. Powered by
@haydenbleasel.com
's calendar &
@liveblocks.io
AI Copilots.
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3 months ago
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reposted by
Chris Nicholas
Liveblocks
3 months ago
Mock up AI chat experiences in
@figma.com
. We've updated our Figma kit, adding new AI components, meaning you can quickly design, prototype, and iterate on conversational UIs.
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The
@liveblocks.io
design kit for Figma now has AI components! You can now mock up your app with our AI Copilots product inside it—the designs match 1:1 with our React package. Design your product, then put it production with full functionality.
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3 months ago
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I've built my own v0 in just a couple hours! • Monaco for the editor • Sandpack for the preview • Liveblocks for the <AiChat /> A wildly productive
@nextjs.org
stack.
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3 months ago
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In real AI apps, front-end tool calling is often far more practical than back-end. Let's say a user can search on the front-end. If you pass the same search function to a tool call, it'll have the same authenticated access. It's easier to add to existing apps & already secure.
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3 months ago
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reposted by
Chris Nicholas
Liveblocks
3 months ago
What's new in Liveblocks → June 2025 • Integrate ready-made AI chats into your React app with AI Copilots. • Add contextual knowledge to your AI from front-end & back-end. • Define tools, enabling AI to take actions & render custom UI.
lblcks.io/pv4dX5L
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I've tested Devin & Cursor Background Agents with the same tasks. Which works best? What can they do?
3 months ago
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I've built an AI support template! Train the chat on your docs—if it can't help it'll show a "Create ticket" form instead. I've also demo'ed how to add a pre-written guide & customer knowledge. Ideal for contact pages. Try it—powered by
@liveblocks.io
↓
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3 months ago
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The
@liveblocks.io
team are hosting an online event about AI today! We'll detail how we've handled: ✦ AI tool calling with front-end actions. ✦ Challenges with real-time data, security, and context. ✦ Building AI that feels collaborative. 📅 12pm PT | 3pm ET ↓
4 months ago
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It's absurdly simple to add advanced AI chats to your app with
@liveblocks.io
. This chat can invite members to your app—updating your users list, and triggering an email when clicking "Confirm". Chat messages are persistent and update in real-time with WebSockets.
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4 months ago
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How to build an AI chat that can take actions! This chat can automatically redirect users to the correct page on your site. Takes 2 minutes with the new <AiChat /> component by
@liveblocks.io
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4 months ago
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New homepage visual for Liveblocks 3.0! →
liveblocks.io
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4 months ago
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<AiChat /> just dropped. ✦ AI understands app context, can take actions, modify state. ✦ Render custom components or use pre-built UI skeletons. ✦ Persistent chats, RAG support, choose your AI, more. Just import the component and
@liveblocks.io
handles the rest.
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4 months ago
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We're just hours away from our biggest
@liveblocks.io
launch yet! If you want to add advanced AI to your app, you should check back tomorrow—it's going to be easier than it's ever been.
4 months ago
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reposted by
Chris Nicholas
Liveblocks
4 months ago
Nothing meaningful is built alone. A new chapter begins next week.
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AI is enabling a new type of programming, it's fascinating. Don't return structured data, just write natural language for AI, and it can figure out what to do next. This is not theoretical either—this is how our AI devtool will reply & call tools. Even better than this though…
5 months ago
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One-time users are now free at
@liveblocks.io
. We don't believe that a user who signs in once is a real monthly active user, and you shouldn't have to pay for them. From now, you don't. Traffic spikes will no longer affect your billing.
5 months ago
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You can now subscribe to individual
@liveblocks.io
threads. This means that end users will receive inbox notifications whenever there's activity, even if they aren't participating already. Update our packages and the feature will appear in your app!
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6 months ago
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reposted by
Chris Nicholas
Liveblocks
6 months ago
Introducing our official MCP server. Talk to your collaborative application in Cursor or Claude as you build it. AI can generate rooms, write comments, send notifications, read real-time data, and more.
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The official Liveblocks MCP server is here! AI has 39 different tools for interacting with rooms, threads, notifications, and more. Use it to generate documents, write comments, check permissions, search through data, etc. Here's me replying to a thread directly from Cursor.
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6 months ago
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Have you seen our open-source emoji picker, Frimousse? It provides a set of primitives, much like Radix UI, meaning you can style it however you like. Plus it has a `shadcn` installer.
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6 months ago
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I love these tickets you can AI generate on
@vercel.com
ship—so cool 👏 I gave it the "slime" prompt.
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6 months ago
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Curious how Liveblocks stacks up against other sync databases? The team at @
localfirstfm.io
have put together a super helpful comparison page, listing everything you need to know 👏
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6 months ago
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Ship genuinely useful AI in a few of lines of code. In chats, AI should be able to take actions, understand relevant context, and be persistent. It should be able to render different custom components as it chooses. Generate suggestions & metadata. Coming soon at
@liveblocks.io
.
6 months ago
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First day free—Liveblocks pricing just got cheaper. We've heard tales of AI and SaaS products exploding after launch, facing massive traffic spikes, only to have users never return. From May, all users will be free until they visit again another day.
6 months ago
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Without these features, in-app AI chats are just a gimmick. • Actions, so AI can take modify your app state. • Context, so that AI understands the current page. • Custom components, so AI can send UI, not text. Soon
@liveblocks.io
will enable building these chats in minutes.
6 months ago
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Love how easy it is to build custom collaborative apps with
@liveblocks.io
👏 Imagine if `useState` were multiplayer—that's basically what it is. How I built this real-time header ↓
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6 months ago
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reposted by
Chris Nicholas
Liveblocks
7 months ago
Introducing… Liveblocks BlockNote. Get started with block-based collaborative editing in minutes. Our new first-party plugin for BlockNote has built-in commenting, notifications, mentions, and offline support. We've also built a Notion-style demo in our starter kit. →
lblcks.io/EWcuhKq
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It should be easy to add Notion-like collaborative text editing. This is why we've just released first-party support for BlockNote, enabling: • Fully-hosted collaborative block-based editing • Real-time comments and notifications • Offline support, multiple editors, and more
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7 months ago
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We love
@resend.com
for their amazing DX, and they've just taken another step in that direction—you can now edit your emails with others, in real-time. Collaboration powered by
@liveblocks.io
.
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7 months ago
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reposted by
Chris Nicholas
Liveblocks
7 months ago
Liveblocks is partnering with
@resend.com
to power their new multiplayer editor. • Draft content collaboratively in the editor • Fine-tune designs together with real-time fields • See who's editing with live cursors & presence indicators
lblcks.io/orKNPMm
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Multiplayer Editor · Resend
Collaborate, write, and edit broadcasts in real-time with your team.
https://lblcks.io/orKNPMm
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You can now update
@liveblocks.io
real-time storage from Node.js. This is pretty handy for adding AI to your app, and letting it update properties live. For example, below I'm fetching a real-time string and creating a summary, with
@vercel.com
ai sdk.
7 months ago
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We've just shared our open-source emoji picker! It's been in production use for years, and now has its own package. It's super composable, lightweight, and you can style it any way you like. For example, with
@tailwindcss.com
, @shadcn/ui, and more.
frimousse.liveblocks.io
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7 months ago
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reposted by
Chris Nicholas
Liveblocks
7 months ago
We’ve open-sourced our customizable React emoji picker • Unstyled primitives—use CSS, Tailwind, CSS-in-JS, more • Lightweight bundle, only fetches when needed • Emojis are always up to date
lblcks.io/4PQ6f4R
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We’ve open-sourced our customizable React emoji picker | Liveblocks Blog
Introducing Frimousse, a headless open-source emoji picker component for React.
https://lblcks.io/4PQ6f4R
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