> **Licensing:** this add-on is a thin wrapper licensed under **Apache 2.0**. It contains no code of its own and simply pulls in the **AI Support AppJar** modules, which are **commercial software** distributed under the [AppJars Software License Agreement](https://www.appjars.com/legal/license/v1/). You can use AI Support for free in **free mode** (up to 50 messages exchanged per day, manual and automatic combined). A license removes all limits. See [Licensing](https://docs.appjars.com/licensing/).
**AI Support** embeds AI-powered support assistants in your application, with a chat interface and an administration UI built with Vaadin Flow. Assistants answer from your own knowledge base using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), administrators can step into any conversation when a person is needed, and every exchange with the model is recorded for inspection.
## Features
- **Configurable assistants:** combine a language model (OpenAI-compatible or local Ollama), a prompt and knowledge categories into assistants for different purposes, and choose a default one.
- **RAG knowledge base:** upload documents (PDF, TXT, DOC, DOCX, LOG), organize them in categories and let assistants ground their answers through semantic vector search.
- **Human handoff and private notes:** users can call in an administrator with a mention, the conversation passes from the assistant to a person and back, and administrators exchange notes the end user never sees.
- **Full chat view and floating chat bubble:** users can ask a question from any page without leaving their task, attach files and rate the session when it is done.
- **Application tools:** expose selected methods of your code as tools that an assistant can call to answer from live application data, assigned per assistant.
- **Messaging channels and LLM Inspector:** connect WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram accounts to an assistant, and review every model exchange with its retrieved passages, tool calls and token usage.
## Installation
If your project doesn't declare it yet, add the Vaadin add-ons repository:
```xml
vaadin-addons
https://maven.vaadin.com/vaadin-addons
```
Add the dependency. The wrapper declares the AppJars repository (`https://maven.appjars.com`), so Maven resolves the modules automatically:
```xml
org.vaadin.addons.appjars
appjars-ai-support
2.1.0
```
- **Gradle** ignores repositories declared in dependency POMs, so add `maven { url "https://maven.appjars.com" }` to your repositories.
- **Nexus/Artifactory mirroring everything (`mirrorOf *`):** your administrator needs to add a proxy for `https://maven.appjars.com`.
Then follow the [Getting started guide](https://docs.appjars.com/ai-support/getting-started/).
## Requirements
- Java 21
- Vaadin 25.2
- Spring Boot 4.1
- PostgreSQL with the pgvector extension, used to store and query document embeddings ([details](https://docs.appjars.com/ai-support/getting-started/#configure-application-properties))
- An OpenAI-compatible API or a locally hosted Ollama model
- JPA / Hibernate
## Included dependencies
| Artifact | License |
|---|---|
| `com.appjars:appjars-ai-support-flow` | AppJars Software License Agreement v1 (commercial) |
| `com.appjars:appjars-ai-support-business-impl` | AppJars Software License Agreement v1 (commercial) |
| `com.appjars:appjars-ai-support-data-impl` | AppJars Software License Agreement v1 (commercial) |
These modules transitively bring in the rest of the AI Support modules and `appjars-*-utils` (same commercial license), plus open-source libraries such as Vaadin add-ons by Flowing Code (Apache 2.0).
## Links
- [Product page](https://www.appjars.com/catalog/ai-support/)
- [Documentation](https://docs.appjars.com/ai-support/overview/)
- [Demo application](https://github.com/AppJars/ai-support-demo)
- [Licensing and free mode](https://docs.appjars.com/licensing/)
AppJars are built and maintained by [Flowing Code](https://www.flowingcode.com).