ChatKit Extension
ChatKit with custom backend: Reasoning Engine.
Lesson
Why not try things out when there are many AI agents to help you?
The lesson in full: There’s a tendency to make ‘custom/in-house’ solutions for a lot of things in KDI, for a very valid reason: to create maximum synergy with the other parts of the product. That is how our Reasoning Engine is still very much custom. This usually comes at the cost of not being able to leverage the speed of third-party innovation, especially ones by big players like OpenAI, Claude, Meta, etc. With the helping hands of AI agents, the scale is tipped when it comes to justifying time/effort to try things out.
What it is
Building on top of the ‘extension paradigm’ that both the Portal and Surface applications are built upon, this project focuses on an external-focus extension: OpenAI ChatKit for an AI-powered chat interface. Includes wrapping the Reasoning Engine for ChatKit-compatible responses via REST/SSE, creating a Surface extension for context construction, and bidirectional translation of Reasoning Engine concepts to ChatKit concepts.
Tools and technologies
OpenAI ChatKit · REST · SSE
Lineage
Built on lessons from Reasoning Engine, UX Reboot and Design System, Self-Service Twin Portal.