Q Chat Client

This package contains a chat client for the Q Language Server, that can be embedded in a webview. It uses MynahUI to render a web based chat interface.

Communication

The chat client communicates with the host application (e.g., an IDE extension) through postMessage requests to the webview:

• When the host application sends a request, the client processes the message and sends it to the UI
• When an event is triggered in the UI, the client sends a message through postMessage to the host application that rendered the chat client

Host environments

The webview is embedded by different IDE hosts, which use different browser engines and load the chat assets differently. As a result, the event.origin observed on inbound postMessage events is not uniform across hosts:

Because the origin is not uniform, the inbound message handler validates it defensively: it rejects only a real HTTP(S) cross-origin message and allows empty, "null", and file:// origins, which are produced by legitimate hosts (for example Eclipse on Windows, where Browser.setText()-injected HTML has an opaque origin). Any change to inbound message handling or origin validation must be validated against every host environment above — see the handleInboundMessage JSDoc in src/client/chat.ts.

Usage

To use the chat client, embed it in a webview within your application and handle the postMessage communication as needed. Chat client is based on inbound (from a destination to the chat client) and outbound events (from the chat client to a destination). Events consist of command and params:

interface SomeEvent {
    command: string;
    params: SomeOptions;
}

Inbound events

Outbound events

Configuration

Configuration can be passed as an explicit parameter when creating chat inside of webview, for example:

amazonQChat.createChat(acquireVsCodeApi(), configuration);

Configuration values:

// Configures quick actions
quickActionCommands?: QuickActionCommandGroup[]

// Configures chat client not to show legal disclaimer as it has already been acknowledged before
disclaimerAcknowledged?: boolean