Building the Frontend for a Customer Support Chatbot with Next.js

As businesses embrace AI-driven solutions, building a seamless and intelligent user interface becomes just as important as powerful backend logic. In this week’s Hands-On AI Playbook, we turned our attention to the frontend laying the visual and interactive foundation for our customer support chatbot using Next.js.

This tutorial is a continuation of our robust backend series, and here, we focus on creating an interface that enhances user experience and brings our chatbot to life.

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What We Covered in This Session

1. Project Initialization with Next.js

We kicked things off by setting up a modern Next.js project, ensuring type safety and scalability. This setup forms the skeleton for every major frontend component of the chatbot system.

2. Authentication System

A functional application needs a secure and intuitive auth system. In this session, we implemented

• User registration

• Login/logout flows

• JWT integration with the Django backend

This enables users to access personalized features and maintain session integrity.

3. Dashboard Setup

To give administrators and business users visibility into chatbot interactions, we built a dashboard UI. The dashboard includes:

• System metrics overview

• Navigation to document upload and chat logs

• Integration with backend APIs for real-time stats

4. Real-Time Chat Interface

At the heart of the frontend is the chat interface. We built a clean, responsive UI that allows users to:

• Start a conversation

• View chatbot responses powered by GPT and RAG

• Interact in a conversational loop

This interface will evolve as we integrate real-time socket connections and streaming responses in future sessions.

5. Embeddable Widget System

To empower external websites with AI support, we created a widget system. This embeddable component allows any website to:

• Plug in the chatbot via an iframe or script

• Maintain branding flexibility

• Connect seamlessly with the backend logic

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Tech Stack Breakdown

• Next.js: Framework for frontend development

• Axios: API communication with backend

• JWT: Secure auth token handling

• React Context API: For global auth and state management

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Why This Matters

The frontend is not just the “face” of your chatbot it’s a critical layer for delivering clarity, usability, and trust to your users. A well-crafted UI increases engagement, streamlines support, and integrates your AI systems into real-world customer workflows.

By completing this week’s session, participants have the foundation needed to build intuitive and production-ready chatbot UIs for startups, SaaS tools, or enterprise platforms.

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What’s Next?

Next week, we’ll bring backend and frontend together with real-time AI interaction. You’ll learn how to:

• Stream GPT responses directly into the chat

• Set up WebSocket connections

• Optimize latency and response formatting

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Catch Up & Watch the Full Session

If you missed the live session, catch up here:
Watch on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=your-video-link

Read the full series so far:

Building a Robust AI Chatbot Backend with Django

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