Building AI Agents with Vercel AI SDK and SWR

Artificial Intelligence is changing how users interact with applications. In this post, I’ll walk through how I built AI agents using the Vercel AI SDK, how it’s implemented in my AI-Bot project, and how I used SWR for efficient client-side data fetching alongside AI workflows.

🧠 What Is Vercel AI SDK?

The Vercel AI SDK is a TypeScript-first toolkit that makes it easy to build AI-powered features like chatbots, assistants, and agents using modern frameworks such as Next.js.

It provides:

• Unified API across multiple LLM providers
• Streaming responses for real-time UX
• React hooks like useChat
• Server-side helpers for edge and serverless environments

This abstraction allows fast iteration without being locked to a single AI provider.

🤖 AI-Bot Project Overview

I implemented the Vercel AI SDK in my project AI-Bot, a conversational AI application built with modern web tooling.

🔗 Repository:
https://github.com/Atharva0506/AI-Bot

Tech Stack Used

• Next.js (App Router)
• TypeScript
• Tailwind CSS
• Vercel AI SDK
• Serverless API Routes

Key Features

• Interactive chat UI
• Streaming AI responses
• Clean separation between UI and AI logic
• Easily extensible to multi-agent workflows

🛠️ Using Vercel AI SDK in Practice

1️⃣ Client-side Chat with useChat

On the frontend, I used the useChat hook provided by the SDK to handle message state, inputs, and submissions.

import { useChat } from "ai/react";

const { messages, input, handleInputChange, handleSubmit } = useChat({
  api: "/api/chat",
});

This hook automatically manages:

• Message history
• Input state
• Sending requests to the backend API

2️⃣ Server-side Streaming with streamText

On the server, I created an API route that sends messages to the LLM and streams the response back to the client.

import { streamText } from "ai";
import { openai } from "@ai-sdk/openai";

export async function POST(req: Request) {
  const { messages } = await req.json();

  const result = await streamText({
    model: openai("gpt-4.1"),
    messages,
  });

  return result.toDataStreamResponse();
}

Streaming responses significantly improve user experience by showing partial answers in real time rather than waiting for a full completion.

⚡ How I Used SWR Alongside AI

While the AI SDK handles conversational data, I used SWR for non-AI client-side data fetching such as:

• User metadata
• Chat statistics
• Configuration or usage data

SWR provides:

• Caching
• Automatic revalidation
• Optimistic UI updates
• Focus revalidation

Example SWR Usage

import useSWR from "swr";

const fetcher = (url: string) => fetch(url).then(res => res.json());

function ChatStats() {
  const { data, error } = useSWR("/api/stats", fetcher);

  if (error) return <p>Error loading stats</p>;
  if (!data) return <p>Loading...</p>;

  return <p>Total Messages: {data.total}</p>;
}

By separating AI streaming logic and regular data fetching, the app stays responsive and scalable.

🧩 AI Agents Architecture

The architecture follows a simple but scalable pattern: UI → useChat API Route → Vercel AI SDK Model → LLM Provider Streaming → Client Metadata → SWR This makes it easy to evolve from a single chatbot into multi-agent systems, tool calling, or RAG-based workflows.

💡 Learnings & Best Practices

• Streaming is critical for good AI UX
• Keep AI logic server-side for security
• Use SWR only for non-AI data
• Vercel AI SDK makes provider switching painless
• Modular APIs help scale toward agent-based systems

🚀 Deployment

The application is deployed on Vercel, leveraging: Serverless functions Edge streaming Automatic CI/CD This setup ensures fast global performance and easy scalability.

🏁 Conclusion

Using Vercel AI SDK, I was able to build AI agents quickly with clean abstractions, real-time streaming, and a modern developer experience. Combining it with SWR allowed me to keep data fetching efficient without blocking AI interactions. This setup is ideal for building production-ready AI applications with minimal overhead

🔗 References

-Vercel AI SDK: https://github.com/vercel/ai/AI-Bot -Repository: https://github.com/Atharva0506/AI-Bot