Shiny Chatbot Application with Offcanvas Interface • chatbotr

A floating chatbot for Shiny. Because every other ecosystem has one and R didn’t.

Python has chat widgets. JavaScript has chat widgets. R/Shiny had textInput() and a prayer.

chatbotr adds a floating chat bubble (or slide-out panel) on top of {shinychat} to any Shiny app, backed by any LLM via {ellmer}. Bring your own key.

Installation

pak::pak("freestatman/chatbotr")

[!IMPORTANT] Requires ellmer >= 0.4.0.9000, to use GitHub API as model provider: unreleased PR pak also resolves the shinychat remote (posit-dev/shinychat) so you don’t have to think about it.

Quick start

library(shiny); library(bslib); library(chatbotr)

ui <- page_fluid(
  floating_chat_ui("chat")
)
server <- function(input, output, session) {
  floating_chat_server("chat", client = ellmer::chat_github(model = "gpt-5-mini"))
}
shinyApp(ui, server)

Chat bubble, bottom-right corner. Click, talk, close. Dashboard unharmed.

Two flavors

Style	UI	Server
Floating bubble	`floating_chat_ui()`	`floating_chat_server()`
Slide-out panel	`offcanvas_chat_ui()`	`offcanvas_chat_server()`

Both accept any ellmer client. GitHub Copilot, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini — dealer’s choice.

BYOK

Let users supply their own API key at runtime:

ui <- page_fluid(
  api_settings_ui("settings"),
  floating_chat_ui("chat")
)
server <- function(input, output, session) {
  settings <- api_settings_server("settings")
  observe({
    req(settings$is_configured())
    floating_chat_server("chat", client = settings$client())
  })
}
shinyApp(ui, server)

Or set OPENAI_API_KEY in .Renviron and move on with your life.

Examples

shiny::runApp(system.file("examples/floating_chat_demo.R", package = "chatbotr"))
shiny::runApp(system.file("examples/byok_floating_chat.R", package = "chatbotr"))
shiny::runApp(system.file("examples/offcanvas_chat_demo.R", package = "chatbotr"))

Browse the example source on GitHub: Floating, BYOK, Offcanvas.

Development

make dev    # format + document + load_all
make test   # unit tests
make check  # R CMD check
make run    # run demo app

Origin story

Vibe-coded across multiple AI editors — opencode, Copilot CLI, Antigravity. All three contributed. None of them asked for credit.

License

MIT

chatbotr