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Interfaces are easy to generate. Products are still hard to ship.

AI made the first draft of a screen cheap. It did not make an analytics product reliable.

Teams still need components that share data, filters, state, and themes. They need an explicit boundary around credentials and business logic. They need a safe way for engineers, end users, and models to make changes without creating three incompatible versions of the interface.

ZUI is an open-source React system for that layer.

Give humans and models the same vocabulary​

A ZUI ViewSpec describes an interface as plain JSON. A registry defines which components may render. Dataset schemas define which fields may be bound. The host application supplies live rows and named actions.

The same declarations power four consumers:

  • the renderer that turns a view into real React components;
  • the editor that exposes appropriate component controls;
  • the validator that catches unsupported components and invented fields; and
  • the model prompt and JSON Schema used for generation.

The model is not handed a blank canvas. It receives the vocabulary your application can actually support.

A generated view remains a product artifact​

Generated JSX is usually a first draft. A ZUI view can be stored, diffed, validated, rendered, and edited again.

When a person moves a card or changes a title, the editor emits a patch. When a model changes the same view, it emits the same patch format. Both changes can be previewed, reviewed, undone, and persisted without regenerating the whole screen.

That is the central bet behind ZUI: AI assistance becomes more useful when it operates on a constrained product model instead of replacing the application with new code on every request.

Start with the deliverable​

An engineering team should not need to study a design-system dependency graph before building analytics. The first path through ZUI is deliberately small:

  1. Describe one dataset.
  2. Register the analytics components the product needs.
  3. Render a view with filters, metrics, a chart, and a data grid.
  4. Connect the application's data and actions.
  5. Let people or models refine the result.

Build that first analytics view →

As the view becomes a product, Apps adds pages, resources, shared state, policies, environments, telemetry, and releases. Workflows adds approvals, tasks, writeback, comments, audit, and run history. Builder adds an embeddable authoring experience. Those are capability layers, not prerequisites for the first screen.

What your team owns​

Your application owns:

  • data access and credentials;
  • business logic and side effects;
  • routing, identity, and authoritative policy decisions;
  • saved views and user preferences;
  • the model provider and model calls; and
  • every custom component your domain requires.

ZUI owns the interface contracts and reusable behavior between those systems. The library is provider-agnostic and does not need access to your backend.

Open source first​

The component library, view and application contracts, builder, workflow surfaces, AI interfaces, token system, and CLI are the open-source project. Use only the pieces your application needs and keep them on your own stack.

ZUI Cloud is the optional managed Cloud or Cloud Private service layer. Config Store provides immutable, owner-aware AppSpec and ViewSpec versions; PDF Export renders a validated view, authorized data, filters, state, and theme without asking each team to operate browser infrastructure; Scheduled Delivery durably generates and sends those artifacts to Email, SFTP, or Slack. These modules save operational work without replacing or locking the open-source application runtime.

What ZUI is not trying to do​

ZUI is not trying to win on button count, replace your backend, choose your model, or make generated code the source of truth. Basic primitives are necessary, but they are not where most teams lose a quarter.

ZUI focuses on the interface layer teams repeatedly rebuild: customizable analytics, operational views, reports, and the contracts that make them safe to create with AI.

Start building​